The volunteer test subject sat in a chair, her head encased by a close-fitting white cap speckled with colored lights worthy of a sci-fi flick.
Each light represents an electrode, a contact point that measures the brain activity underneath the scalp. Using syringe-like applicators, project coordinator Yu Fang Tseng and clinical psychology graduate student Kelly Gair carefully injected a conductive gel into each sensor, which turned from red to green once contact was achieved.
"We're interested in how people's brains react when they see different types of emotional information," explained Psychology Professor Brandon Gibb, who runs Binghamton University's Mood Disorders Institute. "When you see someone smiling or frowning, how does your brain react?"
Located in Clearview Hall, the institute is home to multiple ongoing experiments - and opportunities for the next generation of researchers, both graduate and undergraduate, to get involved.
"We know that depression is really complicated. It involves what your brain is doing, what your body is doing, what's happening in your environment, what's happening inside and outside of your family," Gibb said. "In this lab, we're able to study all of those things."
One of the institute's studies examines depression risks as children develop through adolescence. Participants from 250 local families, ranging in age from 7 to 15, visit the lab every six months over a two-year period, where they complete tasks such as the one the test subject was doing.
As Geir operated the controls on a separate computer, a series of faces flashed across the screen in front of the test subject: smiling in joy, lips peeled in rage, eyes glistening with sadness, cheeks slack in bland neutrality. As the young woman pressed buttons to identify the emotion, sensors tracked her brain activity and the gaze of her eyes upon the screen.
"The faces we pay attention to and how we cast our gaze can tell us about our moods, and our susceptibility or resilience to depression. The lab examines how these responses change during adolescence, when depression is more likely to emerge," Gibb explained.
"You walk into a room, a sea of familiar faces. Which do you notice first: the smiles of the people happy to see you, or the frowns of those you're trying to avoid? Someone worried about being criticized may pay more attention to the angry faces," he said.
In another room, researchers observe conversations between mothers and children on both fun and challenging topics. Special glasses track their line of sight, while sensors on their bodies and faces measure their physical reactions: a racing heart, a smile, a frown.
Meanwhile, just down the hall, the Binghamton BEAR Project focuses on how babies develop emotionally during their first year of life. Using cameras and sensors, researchers observe how babies and their mothers play together, and how their bodies synchronize their physiological responses.
"We're trying to understand why some people are vulnerable to depression and why others are resilient. We know it all starts with stress, but people react differently to stress," Gibb said. "So, we're interested in understanding how vulnerability or resilience develops and how it may change, especially as kids age into adolescence or during the very first year of a baby's life."
A better understanding of how and why depression develops will lead to better interventions, he pointed out.
"Everybody gets sad, but for some of us, it becomes debilitating," he said. "I am really curious about why."
