Neural Engineering

Our brain has a trillion neurons connected by 10 quadrillion synapses. One of the challenges in sensory interface design is to build an artificial neural networks that are comparable in size weight and power consumption to our biological ones.

Neuromorphic Microchips (also called low powered digital chips) are compact, efficient electronics whose design is based on the brain's neural system.

Scientists have been working on microchips to create an artificial retina made in silicone to help blind people see. One of the pioneers in this technology was Kareem Zaghloul .When he was a doctoral student in 2001 he created a chip for this purpose that worked at 60 miliwatts, which is one thousandth of the electricity that a PC needs to operate. “Chip fabricators today can cram a million transistors and 10 meters of wire onto a square millimeter of silicon. By the end of this decade, chip density will be just a factor of 10 show of cortex tissue density’ the cortex has 100 million synapse and three kilometers of axon per cubic millimeter.”

Another doctoral student/scientist by the name of Paul A. Merolla has been using using voltage sensitive dye, while simultaneously recording spikes from a neuron within the patch of imaged cortex to help them build computer chips that can do the same thing.

Wyatt, an engineer from MIT, and his colleague Joseph Rizzo are working on creating a Visual prosthetic or an implant that electrically stimulate the retina. This technology is not yet available to the public yet, but the way scientists envision it working is the patient will wear glasses with a miniature camera on it. The “glasses will sport a small laser that receives the camera’s pictures and converts the visual information into electrical signals that travel to the implant, surgically inserted just below the retina.” Scientific American Special Edition: Secrets of the Senses pg. 66. Click here to see a drawing of the camera and implant .One of the biggest challenges the scientists are facing is how to make this implant waterproof. To see a silicon retina’s response to a face click here .

Blog Name Change

As my explorations continue I realize that I need to change the name of my blog. Initially I named my blog Social Interface Design because the technology I was interested in was named Social Interface. This technology took sound waves and helped people use it to obtain social information about groups. However, the other technologies I've been studying are less about collecting social information as they are about technologies that collect sensory information. So I am changing my blog name from Social Interface Design to Sensory Interface Design.

Eyetracking

New technologies exist that track people’s eye movements as they look at web pages. The technology creates heatmaps that show where the eye is drawn on a web page.

This technology has also been helpful in understanding how people read.

A joint eye tracking study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools has shown that the vast majority of eye tracking activity during a search happens in a triangle at the top of the search results page indicating that the areas of maximum interest create a "golden triangle" ( See Report ).

Read how to understand an individual eye tracking session and see an online video of Eyetracking Research.

I also found an interesting blog on Eyetools Research.

There is a new company in the UK called clickdensity that will create heatmaps tracking mouseclicks. You can try a demo or sign up for a free 30 day trial.

Site Visit to ICT

As part of our last face to face session we visited the Institute of Creative Technologies (ICT) http://www.ict.usc.edu/ . ICT creates simulations that are used for learning.

"Humans remember more if they have an emotional response" (http://www.ict.usc.edu/content/view/62/118 ) . They have a way of monitoring participant's emotional responses to the simulations through monitoring physiological responses. The evaluation system they have developed is called SEE (Sensory Environments Evaluation). "Analysis of data to date has shown that high arousal states in the virtual environment equate to increased retention, and that participants with high first person shooter (FPS) game skills may need enhanced stimulation to achieve the same amount of arousal/retention as non-FPS game players" (http://www.ict.usc.edu/content/view/62/118 ) . Some of the ways they measure this is through participant's heart rate and skin conductance response (SCR). See an example of SCR report at http://projects.ict.usc.edu/see/ under the Bio Feedback link.

When we visited the simulation lab, there were devices that had the ability to track eye movements and cameras that recorded head movements as we were watching the simulation.