PART VI. FACILITIES AND EQUIPMENT

The existing research and instructional facilities at USL, as well as those currently under development, offer a unique opportunity for the installation of a multidisciplinary program. Below we describe four research hubs that are central to the cognitive science program: the New Iberia Research Center, the USL Center for Child Studies, the psychology laboratories, and the Center for Advanced Computer Studies. Cognitive scientists at these four main facilities have already taken part in significant exchanges and collaborations. Additional facilities and equipment are presented in Appendix F. Of course, students are not limited to research and study within these facilities. With Ph.D. programs in environmental and evolutionary biology, computer engineering, computer science, English, and mathematics at USL, students will have the option to expand their course of study within any of the pre-existing laboratory facilities where these programs are now housed.

1. New Iberia Research Center

The USL New Iberia Research Center occupies approximately 100 acres and includes fourteen modern air-conditioned buildings with a total area of 123,500 square feet. The center also operates, under contract, a government-owned primate facility of approximately 19,350 square feet. The present inventory of NIRC exceeds 6,000 primates and includes eighteen species. Macaques, African green monkeys and chimpanzees predominate, but smaller numbers of old and new world monkeys and great apes are also housed at the facility. Although the center focuses on non-human primate research and breeding projects, NIRC also accommodates other projects such as biochemical and behavioral research in rodent models.

The USL/NIRC animal facilities are accredited by the American Association for Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care and have an assurance on file with the office for Prevention of Research Risk of the U. S. Public Health Services, National Institutes of Health. USL/NIRC employs over 125 personnel who provide animal care, clinical, and husbandry support. Animal care and maintenance procedures are designated to insure proper health standards for both employees and non-human primates, prevent cross contamination, and minimize infectious clinical episodes. All procedures are conducted in accordance with NIH guidelines and Public Law 91-759 (revision of Public Law 89-544), as described in NIH Publication No. 85-23. All personnel receive regular in-house technical training on specific standard operating procedures from supervisors.

                    a. The Primate Center Facilities

Ten of the Center’s buildings and seventy acres are devoted to specialized facilities for the production and development of non-human primates as bio-medical models. Each animal colony has its own clinic and service area, with personnel and equipment restricted to specific programs. Completely equipped laboratories are maintained to provide diagnostic services in clinical chemistry, hematology, microbiology and pathology in support of biomedical research. The general design of NIRC buildings allows for compartmentalization of programs by dividing buildings into program areas, with general access and service areas in the center and controlled access areas in the wings. This design incorporates separate air handling equipment in each program area.

There is also extensive outdoor housing. Housing includes indoor/outdoor chimpanzee facilities where chimpanzees can be housed outdoors and escorted indoors for behavioral assessments. Monkeys included in breeding programs are housed outdoors in corn bins modified for small group housing. Animals involved in specific research projects are housed within the current research buildings in temperature-controlled and light-controlled vivariums.

                     b. Life Sciences Building NIRC has recently expanded with the addition of a new facility, a 30,000 square-foot life sciences building. This facility contains three main areas: a general support area; a basic research and support laboratories area; and a vivarium support area. The general support area consists of various conference rooms, offices, and other rooms that are available to staff, researchers, and students. The basic research and support laboratories contain various biochemical and culture laboratories. These laboratories will be fully equipped with state-of-the-art tissue processing and analytical equipment. The vivarium support area is designated for housing animal species and contains a specialized housing and cognitive testing facility for 20 adult chimpanzees. The Life Sciences Building will provide additional laboratory and instructional space that can be used by researchers and students in the Cognitive Science program.                     c. Laboratory of Comparative Behavioral Biology Established in 1991, the laboratory of comparative behavioral biology contains a dedicated housing and cognitive/behavioral testing facility for chimpanzees. This laboratory focuses on investigating similarities and differences between humans and chimpanzees in theory of mind abilities. The laboratory is composed of several interconnected indoor-outdoor housing units (overall floor plan dimensions: 8.3 x 12.6 m x 3.3 m height). A specialized testing facility is attached to these units enabling transfer of subjects one at a time for individualized testing. The testing unit itself consists of an outdoor waiting area connected by a remotely-controlled shutter door to an indoor plexiglass testing cubicle. The latter is outfitted with state-of-the-art remote video cameras wired into a video control room with sophisticated recording and video-editing systems. Staff and student office areas are located on the second floor of the facility, complete with computers, photocopiers, a fully-equipped darkroom, and standard office equipment. The laboratory is staffed by three full-time research associates, and several half-time assistants.                     d. Laboratory of Comparative Neuroscience The laboratory of comparative neuroscience, opened in August 1996, is dedicated to investigating evolutionary changes in cortical structure relating to cognition through comparative studies of humans, apes, Old World monkeys, and other primates. Specific priorities of this laboratory include identifying features of frontal lobe structure that are present in humans (or humans and apes) but absent in other primates. The laboratory emphasizes the use of histological and immunohistochemical techniques that can be used with autopsied brain tissue available from natural mortalities in the animal colonies at NIRC. This enables the direct comparison of brain structure among humans, chimpanzees, and other primates. Facilities include a well-equipped histology laboratory with a freezing microtome adapted for sectioning large brains, a number of ultracold (-86º C) freezers for collection and long-term storage of brain tissue, and an advanced light-microscopy suite. The suite’s Olympus BX-50 and BX-60 research microscopes are equipped with brightfield, darkfield, and fluorescent illumination, differential-interference contrast optics, an Optronics low-light video camera, and a hardware/software package for image analysis, morphometrics, and stereology. Additional computer facilities and darkroom are also available for use in the Division of Behavioral Biology. Currently, the laboratory is staffed by a half-time research assistant and three student volunteers.
  2. Center for Child Studies

The USL Center for Child Studies provides facilities and equipment to study comparable cognitive development in human preschool children. Parallel studies of theory of mind in nonhuman primates and children require similar testing facilities and the center was designed and constructed with this comparative approach in mind. The facility consists of a reception/ warm-up area in which the child (along with parents and researchers) may play with toys. A specialized testing room is available where children are given individual tasks related to theory of mind development. Remote video systems record aspects of the children’s responses which are later analyzed and coded on specialized video editing systems. The facility also includes a remote-viewing area, an archive area, and an office suite. The center is staffed by a full-time Study Director who coordinates two half-time research assistants, as well as numerous undergraduate and graduate students. A computerized subject pool of over 500 preschool-aged children is maintained for on-going studies.
 

3. Psychology Laboratories

The third major research hub of the Cognitive Science program involves psychology laboratories associated with the psychology department at USL. Two main laboratories have been established: the Cognitive Instructional and Research Laboratories, and the Achievement Motivation Laboratory.

                    a. Cognitive Instructional and Research Laboratories

The cognitive instructional laboratory was established in 1989 with an NSF grant. The grant enabled a 5-PC laboratory for simulations of experiments, and to provide statistical software and three-dimensional data-imaging for teaching statistical analyses. When not used as a teaching laboratory, this equipment is available for student and faculty research. The computers are sufficient for many experimental methodologies that would involve utilization of millisecond reaction times exploring cognitive processes, dual-task methodologies exploring attentional issues, rapid serial visual presentation, and moving-window technologies exploring reading and comprehension processes.

Supporting software for program generation includes Turbo C and Turbo Pascal. In particular, Pascal millisecond timing units and statistical analysis units are available for data collection and analysis. In addition, the laboratory also has the Rumelhart & McClelland PDP software for student exercises on how neural nets operate, and for setting up various neural net simulations.

The software of most interest for the experimenter who requires a high-level programming environment is MEL. The MEL experiment development package constitutes a simple, frame-based approach to the construction of an experiment that solicits information from the experimenter concerning dependent and independent variables, number of trials and blocks to run, methodology to use (for example, dual-tasking; Rapid Serial Visual Presentation; simple RT), etc. Based on the information provided, MEL generates code to run the experiment. MEL also includes routines to graph the resulting data at any point in the experiment, to conduct simple statistical analyses of the data, and to export the data to other popular-format statistical programs (BMDP, SAS, etc.).

The research laboratory was established in 1991 with research support funds from USL and from an LEQSF grant. It consists of an additional 7 IBM-compatible PCs. This lab and the cognitive instructional laboratory are physically housed in the same suite of research rooms so that all machines may be used for an experimental session. Several machines have been connected into 2-unit LANS to enable studies of electronic communication.

Additional computers are available. In particular, an Apple II computer has been interfaced with a tachistoscope for experiments requiring precise control of visual stimuli (i.e., for those experiments in which screen phosphor decay might be a contaminating variable). Automatic registration of RT and choice data are available with this setup.

Finally, the research resources in psychology include the Subject Pool. At present, Introductory Psychology students may elect to volunteer for up to three hours of participation in psychological research. Typically, between 500 and 700 subjects are available in Fall or Spring Semester, and 75 or so participants are available during the summer.

                     b. Achievement Motivation Laboratory The achievement motivation laboratory is a "mobile laboratory" consisting of 3 Macintosh 540C Powerbook Laptop Computers. These computers are used to present problem-solving tasks. This flexible system offers researchers interested in cognitive science an opportunity to explore cognitive tasks in populations of individuals not readily accessible on campus.
  4. Center for Advanced Computer Studies

Five research laboratories at CACS are extensively used for educational and research purposes by graduate and undergraduate students and faculty at USL. These include the automated reasoning laboratory, the intelligent robotic systems laboratory the computer vision and pattern recognition laboratory, the very large scale integration laboratory, and the software research laboratory. These facilities enable extensive research on aspects of neural net processing, artificial intelligence, and other issues of interest to cognitive scientists working with computational models and simulations methodology. They are described more thoroughly in Appendix E.