Helping students better comprehend the mind's mysteries is the goal of a unique Internet site developed at Mississippi State.

Funded by a $75,000 National Science Foundation grant and named E-psych, http://epsych.msstate.edu is the only site of its kind devoted exclusively to demonstrating concepts about the mind that are difficult to teach with only a textbook.

"It's difficult to teach students about the mind because it is a process rather than an object," said founder Gary L. Bradshaw. "There are a lot of things about the mind that can't really be illustrated on a static printed page because they are dynamic processes that require movement or sound or both to fully understand."

Bradshaw, an associate professor of psychology, said the project's primary goal is to provide an online resource for psychology teachers who wish to supplement textbooks.

Launched in January and still under development, the web site currently is being used by psychology classes at MSU and the University of Illinois, where Bradshaw previously worked.

E-psych uses video clips and applets-small programs that animate a computer page-to illustrate how the mind processes different types of information. An example is the "flicker paradigm," where site visitors are shown a series of three illustrations in rapid succession. The first and third are almost identical, while the middle image is a blank screen.

Viewers respond when they recognize the difference between the first and third illustration. The exercise is then repeated without the blank screen, with the result that the change is spotted much more quickly without the distraction of the "flicker."

"E-psych has a broader base of problem-solving activities and illustrations than any other web site devoted to the study of the mind," Bradshaw said.