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THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERIEAN
SOEIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
Volume 74
April
1980
Number 2
A Computer-Based Laboratory Facility for the
Psychophysiological Study of Psi 1
James E. Lenz, Edward F. Kelly, and John L. Artley
ABSTRACT: This paper provides the basic reference
to technical resources
for
psychophysiological research developed by the Experiential Learning Laboratory,
Department of Electrical Engineering, Duke University. Hardware and software
facilities are described which permit rapid construction of efficient computer-driven
protocols for a wide range of experiments, entirely in FORTRAN. All data files are
written directly to digital storage in a self-describing standard format, and are thus
accessible
to
subsequent
processing
by
a
large
collection
of generalized
data-
management, data-reduction, and statistical analysis programs. Special precautions
have been taken to insure the integrity of physiological data, including development
of computer-assisted
daily-calibration and system-measurement procedures. The
facilities
described
supply
the
necessary
technical
foundation
for
a
systematic,
wide-ranging, and
long-term program of experimental research on
physiological
correlates of paranormal processes.
Introduction
Although
it has not yet been clearly established that psi events
bear orderly relations to physiological events, a number of theoreti-
cal and
empirical
considerations converge
to
suggest
that they
should, and that the relevant physiological events may
in useful
degree be measurable (Kelly,
1977,
1979).
The discovery of consistent
relationships of this
sort could
in
principle lead to many useful consequences, among them improved
j
1 Aspects of this work have been supported by grants from the American Society
for Psychical Research, the John E. Fetzer Foundation, Foundation for Research on
'
the Nature of Man,
the James McDonnell Foundation, the National
Institute of
Mental HealtlUsmall grant MH 26537-01), and the Psychical Research Foundation.
We also express our gratitude to the Parapsychology Foundation and the Arthur
Vining Davis Foundations, whose encouragement and
financial
support made
it
possible to carry out
this work.
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150
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
prediction and control, resolution of experimental ambiguities con-
cerning time and source of psi effects, and even fundamental new
insights into the mechanisms underlying psi.
To
explore
these
possibilities, we
are
currently developing
a
program of systematic research on the physiological correlates of
,
psi processes in human beings. The central strategy of this program
is to study fluctuations in psi task performance in relation to fluctu-
ations of bodily state, as reflected in various kinds of electrical and
mechanical signals measurable at the body surface.
Although its strategy is conceptually straightforward, this kind of
research
is technically demanding. This
is particularly true of re-
search involving the electroencephalogram (EEG), the physiolog-
ical signal which interests us the most because of its demonstrably
intimate relationship to many information-processing activities of
the brain. Consequently, we have devoted a large proportion of our
initial effort to careful construction of a suitable base of technical
resources for psychophysiological research.
This report summarizes these developments, and
is intended to
provide the basic technical references for subsequent experimental
reports. We have attempted to organize our presentation in such a
way as to make
it accessible to the general reader, while main-
taining adequate completeness of technical detail. Thus, both the
report as a whole and
its major sections begin with general intro-
ductions to the material in them, more detailed information being
deferred to subsequent
sections, footnotes, and parenthetical
re-
marks; the bulk of the very detailed material has been set aside in
appendices for those who have interest in such details. 2
I. Overall Structure and Operation of the Research
Facility
The facility
is located within the Electrical Engineering Depart-
ment of Duke University. A general layout of its organization
is
shown in Figure
, the three main parts corresponding to physically
separate regions of the facility.
The computer, located on the first floor of the new engineering
annex building, is owned by the EE Department. The instrumenta-
tion and controlled environment rooms are in the sub-basement of
,
the old engineering building, some hundred feet, three walls, and
two floors distant. The instrumentation room contains the equip-
ment noted in Figure
1; the experimenter is normally located in this
room while monitoring an experimental session
in progress. Lo-
f
2 Copies of these appendices are available upon request to the authors .—Ed.
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A Computer-Based Laboratory
Computer Room
(With
x Core,
Rooting "Pom
Processor!
Loboralory Peripherol System
LED
Relays W'
OAC ADC
PiogrommoL
bsplnj
111
(16/16) 1(21
HI
Clock
HARDWARE ORGANIZATION
Instrumentation Room
Laboratory Area
Controlled Environmenl Room
Microcomputer
Based on Intel 8095
2K ROM
IK RAM
OAC
( 2 Channels
|
Analog Tape Storage
HP 3960
DC
Recorder
I
4 Chonnels 1
Panasonic Stereo
RS-736US
( Clock
Pulses!
^
Fig.
1. General layout of the research facility. (Heavy arrows denote multichannel
data paths; dashed vertical lines delimit physically separate regions of the facility.)
cated
adjacent
to
this area
is
the
controlled
where the subject
is located during a session
Th s room
is elec
tromagnetically
shielded,
acoustically
quiet
(though
not
sou
SSffld Of Pleasant decor lighted by a bank of adjustable, DC
P
°A typical^perilmental session runs as follows; The subject, after
being appropriately outfitted with electrodes for physiological re
cordtng,
ri brought to the controlled environment room. Here the
electrodes are connected
to the polygraph
via a plugboard, and
various facilities are arranged for presenting stimuli and monitoring
TnTe'adjacent
instrumentation room,
the experimenter
first
makes preliminary adjustments of relevant .^^^’^^mote
using the downstairs console, initiates a dialogue with the remote
computer
This
dialogue may
include,
for example,
tests of the
hardware random number generator (RNG), adjustment of audio
feedback tones, and tests of the response-monitoring devices.
It
invariably includes a standard daily calibration Procedure for the
physiological measurement system (see below
’ ^J
:t'°n
e^
I1
e pe ;. ;
The experimenter then invokes the relevant
real-time
expert
mental control program and supplies
it with information about t
experimental se'ssiSn to be run; for example, session and sub ee
identifications, and experimentalparameters such as numbe^ of
trials, number of physiological channels to be sampled, lengtn o
^With fhe'inst’rumentation correctly adjusted and the control P™'
gram^
suitably
initialized,
the
experiment
proper
can
begin
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152
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research
whenever the subject feels ready. 3 From
this point forward, the
experimenter s function
is principally to monitor the physiological
instruments and to intervene in the event any abnormal conditions
should develop
The experiment
is otherwise
entirely under the
supemsmn of the remote computer program, which controls such
nHno nf
S f ^
eratl°n °f targets,
collection of responses, sam-
pling of physiological
channels,
and
writing
of data records
to
computer storage as dictated by the experimental protocol
tnJ“
e analys ' s °[ the Physiological data in particular
is generally
too complex
o be carried out concurrently with data collection
and
is
instead normally
carried out
later
in a separate
stage by
applying
the
data management,
data
reduction,
and
statfstica!
analysis capabilities outlined below in Section III.B.
II. Hardware Components
Here we give further details on the hardware organization, em-
phasizing major items of equipment that can be purchased in vari-
able configuration,
plus
specialized
or novel components of the
hardware system that are not available commercially.
A. Computer
FlIinvTc
31 comPuter > which we share with other members of the
Electrical
Engineering Department,
is a
Digital Equipment Cor
poration (DEC) PDP-11/45.
It has 28K
16-bif words Xore mem-
ory, supplemented by an (FP-11B) floating-point processor. 4 Stor-
cSa hrp
V
nf
S
hm
ar
de tW° (RK°5) removable
cartridge disks each
capable of handling up
to
1.2 million words of data, an (RC11)
cialized
e
^tilhv
f
Wlt
?
64f WT
dS capacity (used mainly
for spe-
alized
utility functions), and
a (Digidata Maxidek
1730)
digital
°f '^ge amounts of formidable-looking apparatus tends to create a
heavy
technological
atmosphere which some subjects may find intimidating on
emblem w' ?
U ' expene
.nce so far - however, suggests that this
is not a serious
problem. We always spend a good deal of time with new subjects to help them to feel
relaxed and comfortable with us and with the laboratory, and we generX work
intensively with each selected subject over an extended period of time. Under these
circumstances any
initial difficulties seem to dissipate quite rapidly.
4 We wish to thank the Parapsychology Foundation for a special equipment grant
^
h
nLm
ma
t r
P0SS
r
b
!n
the purchase of the
12K of core;
this was essential to
implementation of the software
capabilities described below. We also thank the
Arthur Vimng
Davis
Foundations
for
supporting purchase
of the
floating-point
processor and
digital
tape
drive, which jointly make
it
practical
to apply
these
exnerfnm
capabl ltles to the
lilr8e v°lume of data generated by psychophysiological
cAperimems.
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A’ Computer-Based Laboratory
153
tape drive (1600 BPI, approximately 12-15 million words per 2400'
tape). The main controlling console
is a (Tektronix 4013) graphics
terminal, which has an associated copying facility (Tektronix 4610)
for making permanent records of visual displays as desired. When
large volumes of printed output are generated, as for example in
,
statistical analyses
of physiological
data,
they
are
directed
to
a
small
line
printer (Data Products LP
2310) which
prints up
to
80-character lines
at speeds of up to 250 lines per minute.
As shown in Figure
1, communication between the PDP-11 and
the equipment in the instrumentation room downstairs takes place
through several devices.
First,
the DR11—C
is a general-purpose
digital input-output device reserved solely for our use, which con-
trols
in
parallel
lines of
digital
input and
lines of digital
output. As described in more detail below (in subsections D, E)
it
is used primarily for transmitting upstairs to the PDP-11 sampled
physiological data and other kinds of information generated during
an experiment. However,
it can also be used to send data in the
other direction as
well. For example, we can use
this device
to
display in the laboratory physiological data being received upstairs
by the PDP-11; this assures rapid detection of gross malfunction in
the data acquisition system.
Second, two sets of serial input-output ports are used. The “con-
sole” port can be connected with the DECwriter terminal
in the
laboratory, thus permitting the PDP-11
to be controlled remotely
as described earlier. The “auxiliary” port enables the PDP-11 to
control the 8085 microprocessor; for example,
it is used to load into
the 8085, automatically, particular pre-programmed subroutines re-
quired for a given experiment (see subsection E).
Finally,
a number
of other
facilities
are
available
through
a
DEC-supplied hardware
facility called the Laboratory Peripheral
System (LPS-11). Our LPS-11
contains
the
following:
First,
a
(KW11-P)
programmable
clock,
which
is
crystal-controlled
to
permit precise regulation of the timing of all experimental events
such as the spacing of successive physiological samples, generation
of targets, etc. The
ticks” of this clock are also delivered simulta-
neously
to the 8085
via a special dedicated
line. Other
facilities
include an 8-channel analog-to-digital converter (no longer used
„
see subsection
D); two channels of digital-to-analog conversion,
used for returning various kinds of signals to the laboratory; two
relays, which can be used to control stimulus devices in the neigh-
borhood
of
the PDP-11
(for example,
a
stroboscope);
another
»
16-bit
parallel
digital
input/output
unit
(not
used); and
a simple
numerical
display
of light-emitting diodes (LED), which can be
used,
for example,
in debugging programs
or
to
display
target
numbers
to “agents”
in GESP experiments.
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