Dr-MUSIC: An Effective Device for Investigating Multisensory Mechanisms during Development with EEG recordings.

From birth, we are continuously exposed to multisensory stimuli that we learn to select and integrate during development to perceive a coherent world. To date, there are no optimal solutions to investigate how auditory, visual and tactile signals are integrated during EEG recording in infants and children. The present work aims to introduce Dr-MUSIC, a novel multisensory device with EEG-compatible timing and an attractive design for children. It is composed of audio, visual, and tactile stimulators arranged in the form of a couple of chubby dragons that can simultaneously provide selectable uni-, bi-, or tri-modal information. We first validated the system's EEG compatibility in 8 adults by implementing an audio-tactile oddball task during a high-density EEG recording. Then, we replicated the same task in a couple of toddlers to validate the device's usability for young children. The results suggest that the system can be effectively used for setting new experimental protocols to understand the neural basis of multisensory integration in the first years of life.Clinical Relevance- The amusing design and the possibility of changing the stimulation's characteristics (i.e., light, sound, and vibrotactile features) make it attractive in children with and without sensory impairments. Therefore, Dr-MUSIC could be used to investigate multisensory development and related neural correlates in typical and atypical children to design new early rehabilitation protocols.

Audio-Corsi: a novel system to evaluate audio-spatial memory skills.

Spatial memory (SM) is a multimodal representation of the external world, which different sensory inputs can mediate. It is essential in accomplishing everyday activities and strongly correlates with sleep processes. However, despite valuable knowledge of the spatial mechanisms in the visual modality, the multi-sensory aspects of SM have yet to be thoroughly investigated due to a lack of proper technologies.This work presents a novel acoustic system built around 3D audio spatial technology. Our goal was to examine if an afternoon nap can improve memory performance, measured through the acoustic version of the Corsi Block Tapping Task (CBTT), named Audio-Corsi. We tested five adults over two days. During one of the two days (Wake), participants performed the Audio-Corsi before (Pre) and after (Post) a wake resting period; while the other day (Sleep), participants performed the Audio-Corsi before (Pre) and after (Post) a nap. Day orders were randomized. We calculated the memory span for the Pre and Post session in both the Wake and Sleep days. Preliminary results show a significant difference in the memory span between the Wake and Sleep days. Specifically, memory span decreased between the pre-and post-test during the wake day. The opposite trend was found for the sleep day. Results indicate that SM can be improved by sleeping also in the acoustic modality other than the visual one.Clinical Relevance- The technology and procedure we designed and developed could be suitable in clinical and experimental settings to study high-level cognitive skills in the auditory sensory modality and their relationship with sleep, especially when vision is absent or distorted (i.e. blindness).

Determination of optical parameters and thickness of weakly absorbing thin films from reflectance and transmittance spectra.

A method for determining the optical constants and the thickness of weakly absorbing thin films on substrates is proposed. In this method only the reflectance and transmittance spectra obtained at a single arbitrary angle of incidence are used, provided that the former reveals several interference extrema. The calculation procedure is based on relatively simple relations suitable for the programmed realization and does not call for the prescription of the initial values of the parameters to be determined. The method proposed is fairly accurate and allows one to uniquely solve the inverse problem of spectrophotometry. The optical constants and the thickness of an As(x)Se(y) film formed on a glass substrate have been determined by the proposed method in the visible region of the spectrum.