Event #2 Becoming an Octopus

Last week I was able to attend the “Brainstorming” event. This session was very interesting and still has me thinking of everything that was spoken about. The event was a collaborative project amongst our Professor Vensa and Mark Cohen of whom is a neuroscientist. The whole event was concentrated around brain-to-brain communication. Brain-to-brain communication, is interaction without the help of vocals, gestures and sound.  This is done by two volunteers seated at each end of a table with a magnificent octopus headpiece that has electrodes embedded and make contact to the head. Once turned on, the EEG signals transmit to a computer which then makes the lights in the headpiece light up in many different ways. If the lights align in color, then the volunteers are in “sync” or are on the same line of thought.

I was picked to demonstrate how the experiment would occur but the electrodes were not attached. It was very exciting to see how it all worked and how the music and dark room made everything feel even more real. It was almost relaxing!

As this past week’s topic was medicine art and technology, this event was a perfect fit. It made what we learned come to life and being able to see it with my own two eyes was even more valuable. “biofeedback” came to mind as soon as we left the octopus room. There is a strong parallel to “brainstorming” as they both involve the electrical sensors and the effects of the brain and the body. This can be seen in this experiment as the volunteers’ brainwaves are being monitored. This ins interesting because they then try to line up their brainwaves to be identical to their “opponents”, shown with color and sound. This raises the questions as to weather humans are able to align and regulate their brainwaves.