Synchronised Virtual Reality and EEG recordings

Combining VR experiments with the simultaneous capture of biophysical data (Galvanic skin response, EMG, EEG) has the potential to present novel insights into the processes underlying human learning and decision-making. There are a number of products emerging on the market that combine VR with EEG, but at this moment in time, these devices generally involve a compromise in one of the domains.

In the Immersive Cognition Lab, some of our experiments involve recording EEG and VR (for example, to examine the neural activity that precedes a sensorimotor error) and to this end, we employ Lab-streaming-layer to resolve potential synchronisation problems.

In this case study, we synchronized the recording of an experiment running on a commercially available VR device (HTC) and an EEG system (the Enobio 8 channel). Participants played a simple baseball game whilst we sent markers identifying distinct events that took place in the game so that event-related data could be later analysed off-line.