Eyeblink conditioning

The app focuses primarily on a research technique called eyelid conditioning. Eyeblink conditioning is a form of Pavlovian conditioning and is widely used in by neuroscientists and psychologists to study the neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory formation. Also, these simple behavioral tests are often conducted to analyze various neurological and psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia and autism.

The problem that the app solves is that setting up a traditional eyelid conditioning laboratory requires a large investment: it requires expensive hardware and software in a dedicated, permanent, room. And in addition, processing and analyzing the data requires extensive programming skills.

The 'Blink Lab' app

The 'Blink Lab' app is a patented smartphone application that allows eyelid conditioning to be performed easily and widely in people's homes. The app provides reliable and reproducible results that can be used without extensive technical skills for scientific, medical and personal use. An additional major advantage is that no equipment needs to be attached to the face, which makes performing this task much more pleasant for children and patients with autism.

Status of the project

The project started development of the prototype in late 2020 and we are now two successful development sprints further. A conceptually and technically very interesting project, for which we use 'facial landmark detection' techniques, for example. Keep an eye on our blog and read more about it on the Princeton Research website.