The objective of this app is to develop a fully integrated mobile application that assesses both cognitive and physiological effects of alcohol impairment for the PSU Decision Neuroscience Laboratory.
Sponsored by: Penn State Decision Neuroscience Laboratory
Team Members
Amna Aldamaki Keeley Boell Shareef Elhadidi Satyam Ghodasara Danielle Klunk Kathleen Leahy Yuzhang Zhao
Instructor: Scott Medina
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Project Video
Project Summary
Overview
The Penn State Decision Neuroscience Laboratory aims to understand decision-making processes that influence behaviors while intoxicated with a specific focus on risky behavior. They aim to study the causes behind risky decision making to help prevent it. Here, the Penn State Decision Neuroscience Laboratory needs an easy and reliable mobile application to assess relative cognitive impairment and intoxication levels from the effects of alcohol consumption. While there are cognitive assessment apps on the market, none correlate results to physiological data such as blood alcohol content (BAC). The team was tasked with coding a functional cognitive assessment that interfaces with a breathalyzer to collect BAC data, which would then be exported to sponsors for their research.
Objectives
– Determine appropriate parameters for cognitive tests, designs for user interface, and breathalyzer hardware for research purposes.
– Develop code to create an app with a minimalistic design that guides users through instructions, cognitive tests, BAC collection, and data export.
– Integrate the cognitive testing and BAC data collection into one app with the need for no external software and user input.
– Create guidelines for future teams to improve researcher interface, incorporate automated data export into database, and develop user intervention scores based on behavioral assessments.
Approach
– Review literature on common cognitive assessments (MSIT, Go-No-Go, and Stroup) as well as influences behind mobile app use.
– Network with professionals to understand how different physiological data can be incorporated into app development
– Acquire open-source mobile breathalyzer with software development kit (SDK) from BACTrack to integrate into our software.
– Outline cognitive tests from research papers before coding tests using JavaScript and the ReactNative library.
– Acquire DREAM phones to test code and app functionality.
– Assess app performance by comparing the mobile breathalyzer to a police-grade breathalyzer in terms of accuracy and timing, and by recording completion times for cognitive tests.
– Develop the cognitive and breathalyzer functionalities separately before integrating them into one fully functional app.
Outcomes
– Final cognitive test durations are defined by number of trials per test, ensuring consistency between data and adjustability for sponsors. Current parameters set to 75 total trials, averaging a total test time of 2 minutes, shortening standard cognitive tests by 93% to maintain user attention. The mobile breathalyzer was within 69% accuracy to professional grade instrument due to the device’s lower precision by 1 significant figure and inadequate testing capabilities.
-Cognitive games and blood alcohol assessment are fully integrated into one app, but certain bugs do persist due to limited time and expertise to completely debug the app.
– Provided commented code with details for editing parameters and course of action for future teams to take based on the restrictions of the team’s coding background.
– Penn State Decision Neuroscience Laboratory is able to correlate real-time BAC and cognitive impairment data for their research.