Invited talk: Prof. Dr. Klaus Gramann, Director of Institute of Psychology and Ergonomics, Technische Universitaet Berlin

When:
2019-03-13 at 11:30

Where:
IDV Conference Room IDV R+3

Details:

TITLE:
Mobile Brain/Body Imaging to Investigate Spatial Cognition

ABSTRACT:
Brain imaging of spatial cognitive processes usually requires stationary setups and immobile participants. Navigating through space, however, makes use of proprioceptive and vestibular information originating from movements and contributing to spatial updating. To overcome the restrictions of established brain imaging modalities, a Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI, Makeig et al., 2009; Gramann et al., 2011) can be used to investigate the brain dynamics underlying more natural spatial cognitive processes. In this talk, I will introduce MoBI as a new methods to investigate human brain activity in actively behaving human participants. I will then present data from spatial cognition experiments conducted in the Berlin Mobile Brain/Body Imaging Labs. Brain dynamics in all experiments were recorded using mobile high-density electroencephalography (EEG) synchronized to motion capture and head-mounted virtual reality. Data from actively moving participants were compared to data from the same experimental protocol recorded in an established desktop-setup. EEG data were analyzed using independent component analysis (ICA) with subsequent source localization using equivalent dipole modeling and iterative k-means clustering to optimize a region of interest solution. The results of three experiments demonstrate that some EEG parameters might be replicable in actively behaving human participants hen compared with stationary setups. However, the majority of parameters drastically differ between immobile and mobile human participants. I will discuss the implications of the results and point to potential explanations of changes in brain dynamic states dependent on behavioral states.

BIOSKETCH:
Klaus Gramann received his PhD in Psychology from the Technical University of Aachen, Germany, in 2002. He undertook postdoctoral research before being appointed as an assistant professor at the University of Munich and then spending several years at the University of California, San Diego, USA. Professor Gramann spent five months at the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan as a visiting professor before returning to Germany, where he became Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Osnabruck. He has been Professor of Biological Psychology and Neuroergonomics at the Technical University (TU) of Berlin since 2012 and also became appointed Professor at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia in 2016. Professor Gramann’s research interest concentrates on human electrophysiology, especially in actively behaving humans. Together with a team at the University of California San Diego, he developed methods to image human brain dynamics in actively moving participants (Mobile Brain/Body Imaging, MoBI) with a special focus on spatial cognition and neuroergonomics. He started the Berlin Mobile Brain/Body Imaging Lab (BeMoBIL) at TU Berlin in 2016 which was officially opened in 2018.