Do acupuncture points provide better or worse electrode locations for BCI?

One of the studies we did at JPL during the Summer was to investigate the effect of supposed acupuncture nodes on scalp electrode/skin impedance (which may result in unusual EEG readings). We could only do a limited number of measurements due to the limitations of the equipment we had with us.

Lois Clark (a student) volunteered to be the subject of the tests. Below is the motage we were able to put together. It places 6 electrodes approximately 1cm apart in the area of a well-known acupuncture point.

We found nothing significant (albeit with one participant only), but a larger study will be run in the future before the hypothesis can be ruled out.

Some of our researchers visiting JPL

Here is a picture of some of our team members visiting NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in July 2012, just when the Curiosity was approaching Mars. For the occasion JPL set up a display of copies (some in scale, some 1:1) of various rovers which over the years have been launched by NASA.

From right to left: Riccardo Poli, Caterina Cinel, and Francisco Sepulveda (all from Essex), Adrian Stoica (our main collaborator at JPL) and Luis Clark (a student who acted a few times as a subject for our experiments at JPL).