A Very MAD Blog
Month
I went to the library's bottom floor where all the interesting books are, not necessarily the most useful, but, definitely the oldest and ones with the most potential to find something I wasn't expecting. Like the advertisement of the first correction pen from 1989!
I also found this book which is a book for teaching what I assume is primary level. An interesting quote I found is “Tigers bathe but cats hate water”. It was filled with poems, biology, geometry, anatomy, and a lot of general information that I found very interesting.
This was another school journal, however, this one was mainly focused on history and stories.
This book was from 1991 and gives a good idea about the electronic devices of the time and also the electronic knowledge of the time. Most of the devices I saw are similar to what you would find in kits in electronic stores now.
This book was full of law reports from 1885, It was the oldest one I could find.
This book was a collection of newspapers from the listener between 1988 and 1989. Seeing the styles used back then and the stories were very interesting.
Credit card with perks! seemed fun with all the Trump stuff going on now.
According to this article, all you need to get teens to school is enroll them in a choir.
This book I saw on my way out, basically just a compilation of room designs.
SAS Survival Guide:
How to survive any situation from the basics to long term.
Veterinary Physiology:
Everything you could ever need to know about how animals work and more. I found this interesting as it is very similar to our own physiology
Developing and Applying Biologically-Inspired Vision Systems:
Making artificial environments look real and how the brain reacts to visual stimuli. A collection of academic papers.
We have a window
We have a projector
Cool things happened
Potentially ditching wall idea
making it seem like a real storm
eden researching
Before posting more about our project I thought I might cover some of the basics of neuroscience regarding the EEG (electroencephalogram) displayed below.
Brainwave Frequencies:
Each brainwave frequency points to a specific brain function shown in the image below. Each electrode picks up all of the brainwave frequencies. A problem is the received frequencies include frequencies from general interference and these need to be filtered out or blocked with some sort of Faraday cage, generally they are filtered out by the EEG’s software based on your country.
Parts of the brain:
Current neuroscience believes each area of the brain to control certain functions.
From Back to Front:
“The Occipital Lobe is the visual processing center of the mammalian brain containing most of the anatomical region of the visual cortex.” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occipital_lobe
“The parietal lobe functions in processing sensory information regarding the location of parts of the body as well as interpreting visual information and processing language and mathematics.” -http://study.com/academy/lesson/parietal-lobe-definition-functions-quiz.html
“The temporal lobe is involved in primary auditory perception, such as hearing, and holds the primary auditory cortex. The primary auditory cortex receives sensory information from the ears and secondary areas process the information into meaningful units such as speech and words.“ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe
“The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that controls important cognitive skills in humans, such as emotional expression, problem-solving, memory, language, judgment, and sexual behavior. It is, in essence, the “control panel” of our personality and our ability to communicate.” - https://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps/frontal-lobe/male
“The frontal pole is one of the three poles of the brain (along with the occipital pole and temporal pole), and corresponds to the anterior-most rounded point of the frontal lobe.“ It is the frontmost (anterior) part of the frontal lobe - https://radiopaedia.org/articles/frontal-pole
Nasal:
For more spacial resolution a nasal electrode can be used, which is an electron that is placed inside the nasal cavity. This is relatively rare from my knowledge. It is most commonly used in more accurately diagnosing epilepsy patients - https://www.epilepsyresearch.org.uk/research_portfolio/recording-brain-activity-using-electrodes-placed-in-the-nose/
These areas are located as shown below:
How neurons work:
In certain conditions a neuron fires, this is called an action potential. An action potential is the rapid changing of charges (in the form of ions) that travel down the axon (like a cable for your body). Action potentials can be triggered by a number of things. Such as touch or any of your other senses, Chemicals in the brain, other neurons, or a direct electrical current (these are just a few).
Below is the graph of an action potential in humans, showing the voltage changes over time as the cell depolarizes then re-polarizes.
How an electrode gets a signal:
Any electrical current produces electromagnetic (EM) waves. The electrodes on the EEG are made to be extremely sensitive to these EM waves. The use of multiple electrodes can show what part of the brain signals are being sent and what kind. The more electrodes, generally the greater accuracy. Below are all the most common EEG electrode placements. The first letters represent each of the lobes explained above.
Best EEG for us:
We decided that the Emotiv Epoc+ would be best for our project due to the locations of the electrodes, the price, and it has an API for processing which we are programming most of the project in. It is displayed below:
If you want to learn more about neuroscience yourself look at mcb80x.org
References:
http://www.measurement.sk/2002/S2/Teplan.pdf
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13534-016-0235-1
We decided emotions was a bad idea due to ethical concern’s. We are worried people may be offended or upset by us “telling them” their emotions, also emotions are also seen as private in most cases.
The main ways to tell someones emotion are behavioral and expressions, both of those you can fake, however, with EEG you are literally reading their mind. This is also described in the report I mentioned in my last post: (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5458075/?reload=true)
Our new idea is to measure stress or rather how active the brain is. So, as the user tries to relax we can change the environment. We want to do this with a storm behind a window, which is along the lines of what Eden was researching with komorebi (木漏れ日)
There is also another common untranslatable word for a type of light in japanese knowen as kawa akari (川明かり) or light reflecting off a river.
So we basically want a window with a storm and rain projected onto it with sound effects that have different levels that change with the users brain activity read by the EEG. We would also like to use heart rate. I’m going to go and call this ame akari (雨明かり) light off rain.
I thought back to some research papers I read a while ago (Linked Below) about seeing users emotions with an EEG. This lead us to this brief: “Present An Informed environment developed off the users emotions”
I also remembered a device that uses this same idea made in the place where all the strangest things com from… Japan! It is a device worn around the waist and on the head. It is cat ears and a tail that move to the wearers emotions. They basically use the same technology that Murphy lent us, a 1 channel EEG. Because of this I am skeptical to how accurate they are. Here is the video:
Ears:
Tail:
One of the papers that lead me to think about emotions with EEG: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5458075/?reload=true
Murphy allowed us to borrow his 1 channel electroencephalogram (EEG) to play with. It measured 3 things, a blink, meditation, and attention. Not enough information to guess emotions but enough to control a few different things with concentration.
After playing with the one channel EEG we went to talk to AUT KEDRI, they have an emotiv epoc that we could use for our project, they just need to speak to their supervisor first. However, I noticed the device was corroded, the electrodes were dry and damaged, furthermore, we would need to submit a full brief and reasoning for needing the device where at this stage it is experimental and we don’t know exactly where our project will go. We do hope to get a rough working model by week 5 or 6 though as the finished project as a experience is due in week 7 of the project.
Our current brief is:
Investigate Mental and Physical Interfaces as an Interactive Experience.
Motion and Movement has different meanings in most fields. In physics, they describe how energy is transferred from potential to kinetic. In politics, they could describe a group of people that come together due to a similar set of beliefs. You can have movements of physical things and movements of non-physical things, for example, the movement of ideas. I’m interested in movements in the brain and how they affect the physical world and how the physical world affects the brain.