Eye Movement Biomarkers of Neural Impairment

The Comprehensive Oculomotor Behavioral Response Assessment (COBRA) is a NASA-developed tool that can assess eye movement performance across several visuomotor categories. It utilizes a series of short behavioral tasks while tracking the eyes to extract a suite of metrics (20+ oculometrics) spanning nystagmus, pupil responses to light, saccades, smooth pursuit, and visual motion processing. This multi-dimensional suite of metrics provides a holistic and nuanced view of brain function, enabling unique profiling of different forms of mild neural impairment. We have collected data using COBRA across various impairment conditions – sleep loss, sleep loss with caffeine, and low-dose alcohol. The general goal for this internship project is to start modeling/classifying these distinct impairments using these sets of data and to use this model to make predictions. A presentation of the project will be given at the end of the internship. Opportunities to submit to a research conference or journal will also be considered if sufficient progress is made on the project.

Working hours:
- Full-time (40h/week) onsite work
- Weekly meetings with mentor; ad-hoc meetings if needed

Required qualifications:
- Experience with MATLAB or Python (completed at least one project); a project within a class setting is fine
- Experience with data processing, analysis, and statistics; coursework is fine
- At least one semester of experience in a research setting (e.g., academic lab, industry)
- An interest in at least one of the following areas: vision science, perceptual psychology, neuroscience, neural computation, motor behavior/control

Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with eye tracking and analyzing eye tracking data
- An intro course in Perception - should cover various topics in vision science, visual psychophysics, and eye movements
- An intro course in Machine Learning

**Eligible Applicants:** Student
**Academic Level:** Graduate Master's, Graduate Doctoral
**Activity Type:** In-person
**Citizenship:** US Citizen Only
**Type:** Internships