Brain on Arts-Museum Exhibits
In this study, we partnered with our collaborators at Blaffer, Smithsonian, Synthesis Center and the Contemporary Art Museum-Monterrey to accelerate the acquisition of cognitive, affective, movement, neural and demographic data from the general public attending art exhibits, interactive displays, and programmed performance events. The objective is to characterize the stability and individuality of the qEEG measurements as a function of time of the day (AM/PM), location, type of art exhibit/object, and a number of demographic, cultural and neurological factors, as well as decode affective and cognitive states from brain activity.
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Exquisite Corpse-Dancers
Wearing skullcaps equipped with sensors, UH dancer-choreographers played a variation of Exquisite Corpse, a collaborative, chance-based game made famous by the Surrealists in the 1920s — but they were dancing rather than drawing.
The event was part of a groundbreaking collaboration between Blaffer Art Museum, Houston-based artists, and the University of Houston’s Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory, seeking clues to what happens in the brain as people create, perform, and contemplate art. For this event, we also partnered with the School of Theatre & Dance.
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Minecraft
In this study, we partnered with the Children’s Museum of Houston (CMH) to investigate the brain dynamics of children playing Minecraft – a creative game that enable players to build 3D constructions using textured cubes in a virtual world. The goal was to investigate the feasibility of assaying the neural responses associated with creative game playing in a museum setting and to identify differences in brain activity as a function of age, gender, and gaming experience. Scalp electroencephalography (EEG) and head motion were acquired using off-the-shelf, low-cost, mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) technology that limited recording to electrodes in the anterior and the temporal scalp areas.
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