Welcome to DEEC!

DEEC is the engineering core under The Center for Biobehavioral Neurosciences in Communication Disorders (BNCD). BNCD is a P30 Center supported by the National Institutes of Health NIDCD grant number DC005803.

The DEEC assists investigators with the numerous and varied applications of electronic instrumentation that is integral to studies of communication disorders. These include stimulus generation, data storage and display, customized graphics display methods, and data extraction methods. Technical assistance assures that the investigations are carried out as efficiently as possible, with the most accurate data collection, and with the most informative ways to display outcomes.

The Digital and Electrical Engineering Core (DEEC) will provide expertise to the Center researchers to take advantage of recent advances in digital and analog instrumentation technology. A centralized engineering core will eliminate reduplication of application design and development, will increase productivity and efficiency for project areas represented among the core investigators, and increase the potential for establishing new collaborative efforts among the investigators. The DEEC will assist researchers with applications development in the following primary areas.

• Analog Audio-Video Media Conversion to Digital Video (DV) Format: Transfer stimuli from analog to digital formats. Facilitate the migration from analog A-V signal acquisition to an all digital recording environment, including suitable storage and editing capabilities.
• Multimedia Stimulus Synthesis, Generation, and Response Coding: Generate A-V stimuli using digital technology, create interactive graphical user interfaces (GUI’s) to present stimuli, and develop new methods of audio and/or graphic-cartoon stimulus presentation.
• Synchronous Data Streams: Combining Digital A-V with Multichannel Biosignals: Synchronously trigger, sample, and record two fundamentally unique data streams (digital video and multichannel biosignals) into a composite data format. GUI’s will be developed to permit random access of data blocks in an all-digital environment for a wide range of signal analyses where the goal is to correlate subject state or activity data (kinematics, posture, etc.) with electrophysiological and biomechanical outputs.
• High Speed DAC with Precision Simultaneous Analog Input and Analog Output Operations: Develop synchronous sampling A/D with trigger-dependent D/A for control of peripheral stimulators (linear motors, activate mobiles, air puff generators, speakers, lights, etc.) including supporting electronics and instrumentation.
• File Format Filters & DSP Macros: To establish compatibility between different programs with proprietary file formats, including outputs from Tucker-Davis Technologies, ADInstruments, National Instruments, MATLAB, and NIH Image morphometric macros.
• Data Sockets: Live Data Transfers to Networked Devices: To assist center investigators for efficient data transmission between machines (via Internet) and respond to multiple users without the complexity of low-level TCP programming. This data collection scheme will be particularly useful for those studies involving restricted access environments, or in settings where live transfers of human/animal data or experimentally driven simulations may be shared by students or lab technicians at a centralized computing facility. Although a variety of different technologies exist today to share data between applications, including TCP/IP, DDE, and others, most of these tools are not specifically designed for ‘live’ data transfer.
• Analog and Digital Support and Maintenance: To assist core investigators with routine setup, configuration, trouble-shooting, and maintenance of data acquisition and analysis platforms central to the research mission of participating laboratories.