Psychophysiological Data Acquisition in Digital Games

Faculty: Rob West, Brian Mennecke, Stephen Gilbert

Graduate Mentors: Kira Bailey, Wutthigrai Boonsuk

Interns: Mina Choi, Michael K. Curtis, Hamadi McIntosh

The project is developing a data-logging architecture so that analog psychophysics devices like EEG, galvanic skin response systems, eye-trackers, etc, could be time-synced with a computer running a video game. Usually the psychophysics system is sampling at a greater frequency than the computer, and it's analog instead of digital, so it's difficult to match up events like brainwaves in an EEG to events in the game like shooting an enemy. Once completed this system will enhance research on brain-machine interfaces and the effects of game environments on behavior, attitudes, and learning.

Goal Integrate a video game with EEG in real time.

Tasks

• Review some of the relevant literature
• Pick a research question/design
• Become familiar with the Torque game engine
• Write code to send information from the game to the parallel port
• Parse existing log file in game or create a new text file to track events
• Benchmark the timestamps
• Create a game to answer the research question
• Learn data analysis procedures

Deliverables

• Code for communicate between software and hardware
• Text file that logs events of interest
• The video game
• Brain data
• Poster/Demo/Paper

Milestones & Timeline

• Software to hardware interface completed by the end of the C++ course
• Basic video game created by the end of the OpenGL course
• Simple game with timestamps created in Torque by week 5
• Real game and system completed by week 7
• Data collected and analyzed by week 9

Written work

• Paper
• Poster

Psychophysics in Games: Relevant Readings