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Abstract
Electroencephalography (EEG) is the study of the electrical activity of the human brain. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) are potentials in the EEG that are generated in response to sensory stimuli (e.g., visual, auditory, olfactory, or tactile stimuli). ERPs are time-locked to a stimulus onset so that changes in the brain’s response are associated with changes in the evoking stimuli. As a result, it is important to accurately control the time at which the stimulus appears on the screen and synchronize the event stimulus time with the EEG data associated with the brain response to the stimuli. This thesis presents a cost-effective photodetector circuit to accurately synchronize the visual stimuli onset timing and EEG data corresponding to the brain’s reaction to the stimuli. To demonstrate the utility of the synchronization method, a visual stimulus is presented on a laptop screen following a simple oddball paradigm experimental method for collection of ERP data.