Equipment & Facilities

We take a multi-systems approach to understanding how the mind, body, and social environment work together to shape health. Our labs combine laboratory physiological recording with wearable and biological measures that follow people into daily life.

A participant wearing a VR headset, blood pressure cuff, and finger cuff sits at a lab table while an experimenter adjusts the headset.

Equipment

  • Continuous cardiovascular monitoring. A Finapres NOVA system records beat-to-beat blood pressure non-invasively, alongside electrocardiography for heart rate and heart rate variability.
  • Impedance cardiography. Measures how hard and how much the heart is pumping, including cardiac output and indicators of sympathetic nervous system activity.
  • Immersive virtual reality. Head-mounted displays let us create realistic, carefully controlled social situations in the lab, including headsets with built-in eye tracking that show where and how people direct their attention.
  • Headset eye tracking. Records gaze and pupil size to study attention and arousal.
  • Continuous glucose monitoring. Small wearable sensors track blood sugar around the clock as people go about their daily lives.
  • Saliva collection and assays. Non-invasive saliva samples let us measure biological markers of stress and immune function.
A Dexcom G7 continuous glucose monitor sensor applicator.

Physiological measures

Measures used in our current studies include:

  • Beat-to-beat blood pressure
  • Heart rate and heart rate variability
  • Baroreflex sensitivity
  • Eye gaze and pupillometry
  • Continuous interstitial glucose
  • Salivary cortisol, immunoglobulin A, and C-reactive protein

Pictured: a continuous glucose monitor applicator. Photo: MolBioByte, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

CGM Tracing

A 24-hour continuous glucose monitor graph showing glucose readings rising and falling across the day within the target range.
An example 24-hour continuous glucose monitoring trace. CGM lets us see how blood sugar shifts across a real day, not just at a single lab visit.

Location

Our lab is in Minard Hall on the NDSU campus, on the 2nd floor in the main psychology office area, rooms 232C14, 232C20, and 232C24. Please contact us to ask about guest parking.

Fargo, ND

Fargo shares the North Dakota-Minnesota border with Moorhead, MN. The Fargo-Moorhead area is home to NDSU, Minnesota State University Moorhead, and Concordia College, along with major health systems including Sanford Health, Essentia Health, and the Fargo VA. Our close partnership with Sanford Research supports much of our pregnancy research.

Interested in getting involved as a student, research assistant, or study participant? Please contact us.