Jonathan Touryan

Army Research Laboratory | ALC · Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED)

U.S. service members maintain constant situational awareness (SA) due to training and experience operating in dynamic and complex environments. Work examining how military experience impacts SA during visual search of a complex naturalistic environment, is limited. Here, we compare Active Duty service members and Civilians’ physiological behavior d...

Objective: Currently, there exists very few ways to isolate cognitive processes, historically defined via highly controlled laboratory studies, in more ecologically valid contexts. Specifically, it remains unclear as to what extent associated patterns of neural activity observed under such constraints actually manifest outside the laboratory in a...

There exist very few ways to isolate cognitive processes, historically defined via highly controlled laboratory studies, in more ecologically valid contexts. Specifically, it remains unclear as to what extent patterns of neural activity observed under such constraints actually manifest outside the laboratory in a manner that can be used to make an...

Using head mounted displays (HMDs) in conjunction with virtual reality (VR), vision researchers are able to capture more naturalistic vision in an experimentally controlled setting. Namely, eye movements can be accurately tracked as they occur in concert with head movements as subjects navigate virtual environments. A benefit of this approach is th...

Pupil size is influenced by cognitive and non-cognitive factors. One of the strongest modulators of pupil size is scene luminance, which complicates studies of cognitive pupillometry in environments with complex patterns of visual stimulation. To help understand how dynamic visual scene statistics influence pupil size during an active visual search...

Relatively little is known about visual processing during free-viewing visual search in realistic dynamic environments. Free-viewing is characterized by frequent saccades. During saccades, visual processing is thought to be suppressed, yet we know that the presaccadic visual content can modulate postsaccadic processing. To better understand these p...

Eye tracking has been an essential tool within the vision science community for many years. However, the majority of studies involving eye-tracking technology employ a relatively passive approach through the use of static imagery, prescribed motion, or video stimuli. This is in contrast to our everyday interaction with the natural world where we na...

Eye tracking has been an essential tool within the vision science community for many years. However, the majority of studies involving eye-tracking technology employ a relatively passive approach through the use of static imagery, prescribed motion, or video stimuli. This is in contrast to our everyday interaction with the natural world where we na...

It is well established that neural responses to visual stimuli are enhanced at select locations in the visual field. While spatial selectivity and the effects of spatial attention are well‐understood for discrete tasks (e.g., visual cueing), little is known for naturalistic experience that involves continuous dynamic visual stimuli (e.g., driving)....

It is well established that neural responses to visual stimuli are enhanced at select locations in the visual field. While spatial selectivity and the effects of spatial attention are well-understood for discrete tasks (e.g., visual cueing paradigms), little is known about neural response during a naturalistic visual experience that involves comple...

Relatively little is known about visual processing during free-viewing visual search in realistic dynamic environments. Free-viewing is characterized by frequent saccades. During saccades, visual processing is thought to be inhibited, yet we know that the pre-saccadic visual content can modulate post-saccadic processing. To better understand these...

In this study we quantified performance variations of motor imagery (MI)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) systems induced by practice. Two experimental sessions were recorded from ten healthy subjects while playing a BCI-oriented videogame for two weeks. The analysis focused on the exploration of electroencephalographic changes during mental pr...

Full text available from: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1109153.pdf Electroencephalography EEG and eye-tracking technologies have each been essential tools within the perceptual sciences community for many years. A growing number of studies now combine these two measurement technologies to elucidate the neural processes that underlie free viewi...

Although several guidelines for best practices in EEG preprocessing have been released, even those studies that strictly adhere to those guidelines contain considerable variation in the ways that the recommended methods are applied. An open question for researchers is how sensitive the results of EEG analyses are to variations in preprocessing meth...

EEG preprocessing approaches have not been standardized, and even those studies that follow best practices contain variations in the ways that the recommended methods are applied. An open question for researchers is how sensitive the results of EEG analyses are to preprocessing methods and parameters. To address this issue, we analyze the effect of...

Significant achievements have been made in the fMRI field by pooling statistical results from multiple studies (meta-analysis). More recently, fMRI standardization efforts have focused on enabling the joint analysis of raw fMRI data across studies (mega-analysis), with the hope of achieving more detailed insights. However, it has not been clear if...

We present the results of a large-scale analysis of event-related responses based on raw EEG data from 17 studies performed at six experimental sites associated with four different institutions. The analysis corpus represents 1,155 recordings containing approximately 7.8 million event instances acquired under several different experimental paradigm...

Deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) have previously been shown to be useful tools for signal decoding and analysis in a variety of complex domains, such as image processing and speech recognition. By learning from large amounts of data, the representations encoded by these deep networks are often invariant to moderate changes in the underlying...

Deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) have previously been shown to be useful tools for signal decoding and analysis in a variety of complex domains, such as image processing and speech recognition. By learning from large amounts of data, the representations encoded by these deep networks are often invariant to moderate changes in the underlying...

Significant achievements have been made in the fMRI field by pooling statistical results from multiple studies (meta-analysis). More recently, fMRI standardization efforts have focused on enabling the combination of raw fMRI data across studies (mega-analysis), with the hope of achieving more detailed insights. However, it has not been clear if suc...

Fixation-related potentials (FRPs) enable examination of electrophysiological signatures of visual perception under naturalistic conditions, providing a neural snapshot of the fixated scene. The most prominent FRP component, commonly referred to as the lambda response, is a large deflection over occipital electrodes (O1, Oz, O2) peaking 80-100 ms p...

A primary goal for human-autonomy integration (HAI) is to balance the strengths of human and autonomy in order to achieve performance objectives more efficiently and robustly than either the human or autonomous agents would independently. This paper proposes the Privileged Sensing Framework (PSF) as a novel approach to HAI. This approach is based o...

Brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies, or technologies that use online brain signal processing, have a great promise to improve human interactions with computers, their environment, and even other humans. Despite this promise, there are no current serious BCI technologies in widespread use, due to the lack of robustness in BCI technologies. T...

A growing number of studies use the combination of eye-tracking and electroencephalographic (EEG) measures to explore the neural processes that underlie visual perception. In these studies, fixation-related potentials (FRPs) are commonly used to quantify early and late stages of visual processing that follow the onset of each fixation. However, FRP...

EEG and eye tracking variables are potential sources of information about the underlying processes of target detection and storage during visual search. Fixation duration, pupil size and event related potentials (ERPs) locked to the onset of fixation or saccade (saccade-related potentials, SRPs) have been reported to differ dependent on whether a t...

Eye tracking metrics may provide unobtrusive measures of cognitive states such as workload and fatigue and can serve as useful inputs into future human computer interface technologies. To further explore the usefulness of eye tracking for the estimation of cognitive state, the current experiment evaluated saccade, fixation, and pupil-based measures...

Combining simultaneous recordings of electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking provides a powerful method to evaluate the neural mechanisms of vision by isolating fixation-related potentials (FRPs), evoked EEG activity during periods of eye fixation. This approach provides a means to evaluate visual information processing without imposing the c...

Recording synchronous data from EEG and eye-tracking provides a unique methodological approach for measuring the sensory and cognitive processes of overt visual search. Using this approach we obtained fixation related potentials (FRPs) during a guided visual search task specifically focusing on the lambda and P3 components. An outstanding question...

Saccade direction and magnitude as a function of auditory condition. A. Angular histogram of saccades in each auditory condition. B. Main sequence of saccades from all subjects for each auditory condition. C. Average saccade amplitude in each auditory condition. (PDF)

Non-target FRP–Ignore. Grand average Non-target FRP from the Ignore condition. (TXT)

Non-target FRP– 0Back. Grand average Non-target FRP from the 0Back condition. (TXT)

Non-target FRP– 1Back. Grand average Non-target FRP from the 1Back condition. (TXT)

Target Non-target Difference– 2Back. Grand average Target Non-target difference FRP from the 2Back condition. (TXT)

Behavior and Eye Tracking Data. Behavior and eye tracking data from each subject for each condition. (XLSX)

Non-target FRP–Silent. Grand average Non-target FRP from the Silent condition. (TXT)

Non-target FRP– 2Back. Grand average Non-target FRP from the 2Back condition. (TXT)

Target Non-target Difference–Silent. Grand average Target Non-target difference FRP from the Silent condition. (TXT)

Target Non-target Difference– 0Back. Grand average Target Non-target difference FRP from the 0Back condition. (TXT)

Target Non-target Difference–Ignore. Grand average Target Non-target difference FRP from the Ignore condition. (TXT)

Target Non-target Difference– 1Back. Grand average Target Non-target difference FRP from the 1Back condition. (TXT)

In this study we explored the potential for capturing the behavioral dynamics observed in real-world tasks from concurrent measures of EEG. In doing so, we sought to develop models of behavior that would enable the identification of common cross-participant and cross-task EEG features. To accomplish this we had participants perform both simulated d...

Brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies, or technologies that use online brain signal processing, have a great promise to improve human interactions with computers, their environment, and even other humans. Despite this promise, there are no current serious BCI technologies in widespread use, due to the lack of robustness in BCI technologies. T...

Eye-fixations elicit a neural response commonly referred to as the lambda potential that is similar to the visually-evoked P1 event-related potential (ERP) component. An outstanding question is whether the lambda potential is influenced by concurrent auditory task demands. To address this question we obtained simultaneous eye-movement and electroen...

Eye movement patterns, including the pupillary response, have been shown to correlate with cognitive states such as mental workload or time-on-task fatigue. Likewise, these signals have been shown to directly correlate with behavior in both simple and complex tasks. In this study we explored the link between eye movement patterns and performance in...

A cognitive systems engineering evaluation of an imagery analysis system was conducted to capture baseline performance and workload and compare it to performance with advanced filtering capabilities. Experienced Imagery Analysts searched for and annotated targets of interest in full-motion video in Army-relevant scenarios. Measures of performance i...

Brain computer interaction (BCI) technologies have proven effective in utilizing single-trial classification algorithms to detect target images in rapid serial visualization presentation tasks. While many factors contribute to the accuracy of these algorithms, a critical aspect that is often overlooked concerns the feature similarity between target...

Extrastriate area V4 is a critical cortical component of visual form processing in both humans and non-human primates. The tuning of V4 neurons shows an intermediate level of complexity that lies between the narrow band orientation and spatial frequency tuning of neurons in primary visual cortex and the highly complex object selectivity seen in inf...

Human Systems Integration evaluation of the Advanced Video Activity Analytics (AVAA) system was conducted to capture baseline performance and workload with the AVAA system and compare it to performance with advanced AVAA features. This first-year assessment focused on the impact of V-NIIRS (Video National Imagery Interpretability Rating Scale), a w...

Brain wave activity is known to correlate with decrements in behavioral performance as individuals enter states of fatigue, boredom, or low alertness.Many BCI technologies are adversely affected by these changes in user state, limiting their application and constraining their use to relatively short temporal epochs where behavioral performance is l...

Background / Purpose: In this study we quantified visual properties of target objects within a large ensemble of natural images. Using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm, we were able to systematically measure the effect of these properties on the behavioral reaction time (RT), P300, and single-trial classification accuracy. Main...

Advances in neurotechnology have made it possible for researchers to investigate brain function beyond the laboratory using mobile electroencephalography (EEG) systems. Mobile EEG systems offer researchers more experimental flexibility and a cheaper alternative to laboratory-based systems; however, it is unclear if their signal quality is comparabl...

The need to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously is often encountered in everyday experience, but coordinating between two or more tasks can lead to impaired performance. Typical investigations of multitasking impairments have focused on the performance of two tasks presented in close temporal proximity on discrete trials; however, such paradigm...

Brain-computer interface technology has experienced a rapid evolution over recent years. Recent studies have demonstrated the feasibility of detecting the presence or absence of targets in visual imagery from the neural response alone. Classification accuracy persists even when the imagery is presented rapidly. While this capability offers signific...

Brain wave activity is known to correlate with decrements in behavior brought on by fatigue, boredom or low levels of alertness. Being able to predict these behavioral changes from the neural activity via electroencephalography (EEG) is an area of ongoing interest. In this study we used an established approach to predict time-on-task decrements in...

Technical advances intended to improve situational awareness by providing more information about the tactical environment place high demands on the Soldier’s limited-capacity cognitive and neural systems. Information display technologies have been developed that filter information to prevent performance failures due to information overload. However...

Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used extensively to study the processes involved in recognition memory. In particular, the early familiarity component of recognition has been linked to the FN400 (mid-frontal negative deflection between 300 and 500 ms), whereas the recollection component has been linked to a later positive deflection over...