We attribute our success thus far to our partnership style client relationships.  One recent successful project was with the University of Victoria, BC, Canada.  During this project we worked with researchers in the Department of Psychology to help them investigate questions about how people use their brains to navigate in 3D environments and find their way about in the world. This client-partnership has provided these researchers with the opportunity to identify the complex brain function related to their research paradigm.  They have gathered a significant amount of new information about spatial navigation. While helping them with their investigation, they provided ABV Sciences with a context in which to gather successful examples of the application of our MOST-EEG technology and with information about brain function associated with spatial navigation in 3D a video game environment.  In addition to the marketing and technical gains of this relationship, this collaborative experience has helped ABV Sciences create and define our client-partnership business model.   Having learned from the mutual success of this relationship, ABV Sciences will to continue nurture university relationships so that we may continue to move neuroscience forward and concurrently offer our client-partners leading edge expertise.

Funding for Public Partnerships

Funding for public partnerships to investigate specific research questions typically comes through a partner university.  This funding model facilitates the investigation of the relationship between healthy brain function and human behavior, investigations to understand the diseased brain, and the investigation and development of serious games for rehabilitation or training purposes.  Such funding can come from a variety of sources including: economic development funds, or national scientific research grants.  In such a scenario, ABV Sciences is an external consultant helping the university create public knowledge about brain function.

Characterizing Function of the Healthy and Diseased Brain

One interest of researchers in public institutions such as universities is the characterization of healthy brain function to understand the relationship between brain activity and human behavior.  By doing so, we can better understand how to use our brains and identify when brain function diverges from normal.  A second interest of researchers in public institutions is in characterizing the diseased brain so that when brain function does diverge from normal, we can employ classification schemes to identify the disease.  Research investigations of the diseased brain helps us understand the progression of the particular disease and its variants, and understand how behavior changes with the disease.  ABV Sciences is positioned to help researchers with such investigations by employing brain activity data mining algorithms such as our MOST-EEG algorithm and providing researchers with the results of the analysis.

Investigation of Brain Function of Cognitive Strategies: Serious Games

A relatively new way to rehabilitate or train brain function is through the use of video game technology and a genre of games called ’serious games’. The development of serious game concepts for behavioral-based therapies for re-acquiring lost skills after brain injury and for skills-training purposes is being done in both pubic and private institutions.  The theoretical neuroscience knowledge on which these games are designed comes from public research.  It has been in the public university domain that the cognitive strategies employed in gaming and the neural substrates that underlie it have been identified and studied. Building on knowledge derived through university investigations, private institutions create games for the consumer market and make such ‘theraputic’ games available for general use.  ABV Sciences employs our MOST-EEG technology to reveal what brain function is elicited by specific characteristics of gaming environments to help guide the development of serious games.

To discuss such a partnership, contact Dr. Philip Michael Zeman by phone (+1-250-589-4234) or by email (pzeman@abvsciences.com).  To view some example results obtained in a recent study of spatial navigation in the context of 1st-person perspective video game play, please check out our recent media campaign: www.spatialbrain.com (opens new window).  For information about private partnerships for investigating specific research questions or for applying our expertise and technology in other avenues, see our Private Partnerships page.