Don’t Shoot: University Of Alabama Using Virtual Reality, Neuroscience To Improve Police Training

By David Miller

University of Alabama researchers are using a novel approach to learn how police officers react to “shoot, don’t shoot” situations: measuring brain waves during virtual reality police training.

For the past year, Drs. Rick Houser (counselor education), Dan Fonseca (engineering) and Ryan Cook (clinical mental health counseling) have used a mobile electroencephalogram, or EEG, amplifier to measure the brain activity of three law enforcement officers to determine which regions of the brain are active during simulations of potentially high-threat situations.

Preliminary EEG findings, combined with an algorithm used to calculate the sources within the brain, show that one of the five brain waves, in this case the “beta” wave most often associated with thinking, has the highest activity in certain brain regions.“Preliminary analyses show that officers may activate more beta or thinking brain waves in the right temporal-parietal junction in making decisions associated with responding to high-threat situations,” Houser said. “The right temporal-parietal junction is associated with predicting intentions of others, consistent with a major theory in psychology – ‘Theory of Mind.’

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