Validated and analysed co-registered EEG and fNIRS
Visiting researcher on the validation and analysis of simultaneous EEG, fNIRS and peripheral recordings from immersive VR, where movement and arousal degrade every signal at once.
Question. Once cortical haemodynamics, electrophysiology and peripheral signals have been recorded together during a genuinely intense immersive experience, how much of that data is actually usable, and what does each modality add over the others?
What I did. Visiting researcher with the Neuroscience group at Telefónica Innovación Digital, contributing to the validation and analysis pipeline for data co-registered from EEG, fNIRS and peripheral physiology while participants experienced virtual rollercoasters and immersive VR video. My work sat downstream of the recording itself: assessing signal quality, deciding what survived, and analysing what remained.
Method. Quality assessment and analysis of multimodal recordings acquired in immersive VR under naturalistic, high-arousal stimulation, a setting where movement, headset hardware and strong autonomic responses all work against signal quality.
Why it matters. fNIRS is far more tolerant of movement than most cortical measures, which makes it one of the few realistic options for studying the brain during immersive, freely-experienced situations. Combining it with EEG and peripheral physiology is a direct attempt to get central and autonomic measures out of the constrained laboratory paradigms that most affective models are trained on.
Role and collaborators. Visiting researcher on the validation and analysis side of the project, working with Sebastián Idesis (Research Scientist, Telefónica Innovación Digital) — a collaboration that goes back to our first joint publication on electrodermal and behavioural responses to emotional words in 2018.