Closed-Loop Feedback Control for Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, Phase II.

Human analysts are presented with ever-increasing amounts of data to process, taxing the limitations of human cognitive capacity. This cognitive overloading leads to increased likelihood of errors and accidents, with costly consequences in mission critical operations. Consequently, there is a rising demand for more efficient processing of increasingly large amounts of intelligence. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a potential intervention for such enhancement of human operator cognitive abilities. Reported benefits from tDCS include increased measures of vigilance, reduced training time, and improvements in multi-tasking. One approach to delivering tDCS is to implement a closed-loop system, which monitors and assesses cognitive state, and provides an appropriate intervention in a real-time feedback loop. Our Phase II project will build upon the designs which were developed during Phase I. The outcome of this project will be a lightweight, fully integrated, wearable EEG and tDCS headset for Closed-Loop Improved Cognition (CLIC). This system will be designed as a fully integrated and standalone headset for unobtrusive long-term use in real-world environments. The CLIC system will incorporate an advanced dry electrode EEG monitoring system, real-time cognitive-state classification algorithms linked to a variable structure observer (VSO) based controller, and a low-noise tDCS system.