BRAIN STATION:A WORKSTATION FOR NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this revised Phase I application Neurobehavioral Systems (NBS) introduces Brain-station, a neurophysiological workstation for Windows, Linux, and UNIX computers. Brain-station will utilize an innovative Open Pipeline Shell (OPS) that can (1) interactively analyze concurrently acquired data sets (e.g., EEG and simultaneous fMRI), and (2) control stimulus delivery based on features of the data. Brain-station analysis will be encapsulated in discrete interchangeable modules that can be developed and tested in isolation, inserted in any OPS pipeline, and operated in interactive or batch-processing modes. NBS will encourage module development and improvement by users and professional developers with financial incentives, software development kits (SDKs), and technical support. To increase Brain-station's utility, NBS will introduce XML-based Universal Data Format (UDF) incorporating the features of all existing EEG/MEG formats, enable the translation of nine different formats into/from UDF, and distribute an event-encoding system permitting event-related analyses with any source of continuous EEC/MEG signals. At the end of Phase I, Brain-station Developer's Release will include modules for encoding, viewing, and recombining EEG/MEG data, and complete SDKs with interface modules for Matlab, C++ and other common programming environments. Phase I will lay the foundation for a complete Brain-station workstation during Phase II.