My name is Kyle Kaufman and I am starting a gofundme project in order to gather the materials essential to my success and continued research in Cognitive Neuroscience.  Along with my full time student status at the University of California Davis, I am working at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience doing research in human memory and spatial navigation, with a focus on brain structures like the hippocampus/parahippocampus, and surrounding cortical structures.  My focus lies in 3D environments, more specifically in virtual reality and immersion. 

Through the use of hardware gathered from this gofundme project, I plan on developing 3D environments in Unity, a game development software, and through the use of the Oculus Rift (a head mounted display) I will be testing research participants on their spatial navigation performance in a fully immersive 3D environment, and analyze data gathered from scalp EEG/ fMRI, and in the future compare this control data with Traumatic Brain Injury patients to see effects of brain damage centered in the desired regions on performance.  This project is working along side similar data gathered from stimuli presented on a 2D platform, which hosts a variety of issues including lack of immersion, lack of participant enthusiasm, and especially motion sickness due to distortion of field of view on the screen.  This hosts potential correlations with errors in the data. 

The materials I will need which the total goal of this gofundme project contains is a 15" macbook Pro w/ retina display with an upgraded 2.8 GHz quad-core intel i7 processor overclocked to 4.0 GHz ($2915.99 including tax) [click here for more information] in order to run the dual 1080p resolution screens that are a part of the Oculus Rift DK2 which is also needed ($378.00 including tax) [click here for more information] and finally the Unity Pro software package ($750.00 after 50% student discount & no tax) [click here for more information] which is required due to Unity Pro's ability to access peripheral hardware for script manipulation for my 3D environments and the interactions that take place within them.

  This is a fairly expensive dilemma, but my Lab at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience is a Mac centered lab so I need to use compatable hardware/software so that collaboration can be streamlined.  My future goal is to graduate from UC Davis and continue my research in the field of Neuroscience and potentially continue my work at Ekstrom Lab as I start my professional post Bachelor's degree career, and to attend Graduate school after a few years of experience in the field and maybe a few publications.  Through my volunteering that I have done I have shown Dr. Ekstrom my commitment to the field and his interests and I wish to continue to show my dedication by investing my own resources into the lab instead of passively accepting what is available to me.  I enjoy taking the bull by the horns. :).

Thank you in advance for your help if you choose to do so, and I look forward to starting my own project in Neuroscience.  If you are interested in the work done at Ekstrom Lab then you may visit our website -> http://humanspatialcognitionlab.org/