SBIR-STTR Award

We propose to investigate the design of a multimodal cognitive assessment system (MCAS)to seamlessly integrate recording and analysis technologies and enhance the arousal state and decision-making performance of the war fighter under stressful conditions. Our plan is to define a multimodal psychophysiological data collection and analysis system architecture for the development of future technologies capable of delivering cognitive status updates and augmenting the presentation of critical data to a time when the operator is aroused and attentive and best able to process and retain information. Our proposed technology would analyze brainwave patterns associated with higher order executive processing, as well as, eye and heart measures to intelligently identify variability in arousal, stress, and cognitive workload capacity and manage the interface of these data for fitness assessment and task assignment. Our innovative technology would provide behavioral and workload assessment researchers with new tools to investigate higher order cognitive and automomic mechanisms involved in operational decision-making under high stress conditions. Quantifying a war fighter's cognitive state under stressful conditions is a multifaceted problem that is unlikely to be solved by any single effort. What is required are tools that aid the creation of new experiments designed to study the stages of mental effort in actual operational situations from many different viewpoints and with multiple populations taking into account cognitive processing differences based on ability, age, sex, and stress from fatique, injury, or workload. With portable tools to acquire multimodal signals and measure task specific attentiveness and stress changes, workload researchers will be able to gather psychophysiological data in real-world settings and enhance the interoperability of computer-based war fighter systems. Therefore, we intend to develop an inexpensive and easy to use MCAS that includes tools for sensor integration, task design and analysis, and wireless transmission capabilities to take cognitive monitoring technologies out of the lab and into the field

In our Phase II effort, we propose to investigate the basic concepts required to quickly measure physiological signals, develop an advanced human-computer collaborative system, and design a software developers kit (SDK) that offers system designers precise control over event timing and stimulus characteristics based on a cognitive assessment strategy capable of predicting when the war fighter is best able to process, retain, and act upon critical information. This innovative Cognitive Assessment (CA) technology, would provide: 1) unprecedented flexibility and simplicity in design and implementation of the next generation in self-paced computer-adaptive training (CAT) systems specifically designed to enhance the war fighter's operational readiness; 2) optimized collecting and processing of reaction times, EEG and event-related potentials, functional neural images, and other cognitive and stress-related measurements with functions for organizing and exporting behavioral datasets; 3) use under any current operating system to provide a user-friendly interface to existing COTS technologies for signal acquisition, task development, and data analysis; and 4) broad compatibility with net-centric Web-enabled multimedia tools for development of sophisticated C2,ISR systems.

Keywords:
COGNITIVE ASSESSMENT, TELEDIAGNOSTICS, AMBULATORY MONITORING, EEG