Welcome
The Cognitive Technologies exhibit finished its residency in the Exploratorium in March 2015.
The exhibit was open 1-4pm Saturdays and Sundays, and 6:30-9:30pm Thursday nights from January 29 through March 1, 2015.
What is it?
The Exploratorium has invited the Cognitive Technology Group and M0xy to create an interactive exhibition demonstrating the modern tools of neuroscience and their applications.
At the Cognitive Technologies exhibit, you experience:
This lab aims to spur further conversation, research, and technology development to understand, improve, and extend the human nervous system.
An environment you interact with using your brain
At the exhibit, you get to interact with a large ecosystem of emerging brain technologies, including high-resolution cortical tissue scanning, fMRI brain models, and portable EEG headsets. You can experience virtual reality-based neurofeedback, track your body's physiological changes during a meditation exercise, and control a robotic arm with your brain activity.
Many communication technologies have been called an "extension of the mind." In this exhibit, we created an environment that you interact with directly using your brain, via portable EEG headsets that measure brainwave activity. As far as we know, this is the first time that such an environment has been built.
Visitors can wander freely around the room while wearing a wireless portable EEG headset, and use their mental state to interact with light sculptures, a virtual reality environment, and a calmness booth. This experience offers a glimpse into a future where neural prosthetics are more developed.
What is Cognitive Technology?
Cognitive Technology is an extension of Cognitive Science. It asks, "How can we apply the knowledge from psychology, neuroscience, and computer science to create tools that improve mental function?"
Relevant technologies range from nanoscale-resolution imaging of individual neurons, to brain imaging tools such as fMRI or fNIRS, to higher-level interfaces such as virtual reality.
Understand, Extend, and Improve the Brain
How does the brain work, and how can we improve it?
We can create tools to extend the brain. Through haptic devices, immersive environments, robotics, and other actuators, we can amplify the amount of information coming out of the brain, and use it to do beautiful and useful things.
We can create tools to improve the brain - to become better at problem solving, more focused, aware of cognitive biases, empathetic, and creative. The knowledge gained in the cognitive sciences and neuroscience can be applied to improve the way our brains work.
We can create tools to understand the brain - to make more detailed maps of how we make learn new skills, how the visual cortex seamlessly integrates information from each eye, or how synapses fire electrical signals. Technologies like EEG, fNIRS, fMRI, and connectomics are like telescopes that give us a window into the brain. As we create better telescopes, we will get a clearer picture of how the brain produces thoughts and feelings. In turn, more understanding will give us more ideas on the approaches we could use to extend and improve the brain.
Why might we want to influence the brain?
Contact
Cognitive Technology Group: hello@cogtech.net
m0xy Industrial Arts Incubator: info@m0xy.com
The Cognitive Technologies exhibit finished its residency in the Exploratorium in March 2015.
The exhibit was open 1-4pm Saturdays and Sundays, and 6:30-9:30pm Thursday nights from January 29 through March 1, 2015.
What is it?
The Exploratorium has invited the Cognitive Technology Group and M0xy to create an interactive exhibition demonstrating the modern tools of neuroscience and their applications.
At the Cognitive Technologies exhibit, you experience:
- emerging tools to understand brain activity
- educational exhibits on neuroscience and how the brain works
- applications of brain-computer interface technology
This lab aims to spur further conversation, research, and technology development to understand, improve, and extend the human nervous system.
An environment you interact with using your brain
At the exhibit, you get to interact with a large ecosystem of emerging brain technologies, including high-resolution cortical tissue scanning, fMRI brain models, and portable EEG headsets. You can experience virtual reality-based neurofeedback, track your body's physiological changes during a meditation exercise, and control a robotic arm with your brain activity.
Many communication technologies have been called an "extension of the mind." In this exhibit, we created an environment that you interact with directly using your brain, via portable EEG headsets that measure brainwave activity. As far as we know, this is the first time that such an environment has been built.
Visitors can wander freely around the room while wearing a wireless portable EEG headset, and use their mental state to interact with light sculptures, a virtual reality environment, and a calmness booth. This experience offers a glimpse into a future where neural prosthetics are more developed.
What is Cognitive Technology?
Cognitive Technology is an extension of Cognitive Science. It asks, "How can we apply the knowledge from psychology, neuroscience, and computer science to create tools that improve mental function?"
Relevant technologies range from nanoscale-resolution imaging of individual neurons, to brain imaging tools such as fMRI or fNIRS, to higher-level interfaces such as virtual reality.
Understand, Extend, and Improve the Brain
How does the brain work, and how can we improve it?
We can create tools to extend the brain. Through haptic devices, immersive environments, robotics, and other actuators, we can amplify the amount of information coming out of the brain, and use it to do beautiful and useful things.
We can create tools to improve the brain - to become better at problem solving, more focused, aware of cognitive biases, empathetic, and creative. The knowledge gained in the cognitive sciences and neuroscience can be applied to improve the way our brains work.
We can create tools to understand the brain - to make more detailed maps of how we make learn new skills, how the visual cortex seamlessly integrates information from each eye, or how synapses fire electrical signals. Technologies like EEG, fNIRS, fMRI, and connectomics are like telescopes that give us a window into the brain. As we create better telescopes, we will get a clearer picture of how the brain produces thoughts and feelings. In turn, more understanding will give us more ideas on the approaches we could use to extend and improve the brain.
Why might we want to influence the brain?
- The mind and brain are downright fascinating. Even a little bit of exploration into the function and activity of the brain can be hugely rewarding, even if you don't come from a science background.
- Discoveries in neuroscience help scientists to treat neurological disorders. We can reduce age-related diseases such as Parkinsons or Alzheimers. We can also target diseases that affect younger, healthy people such as ADHD, depression, or insomnia.
- We can also use the understanding of the brain to find ways to improve the brain. For example, the ecosystem of interactive media and VR combined with natural language processing could be hugely beneficial for creating educational curriculum.
Contact
Cognitive Technology Group: hello@cogtech.net
m0xy Industrial Arts Incubator: info@m0xy.com
Special Thanks
Made possible through the generous support of InteraXon, SparkIO, Alchemy Events, Puzzlebox, DigitalOcean, OpenBCI, LEAP Motion, NeuroSky, and AgentFin Consulting.
Thanks to Brain Networks Laboratory, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Lichtman Lab, and Eyewire for contributing data to the neuroimaging exhibits by 3scan.
Thanks to Dr. Randal Koene for feedback and advice on science communication, Robert Hanson for his concept art and design work, to Will Wnękowicz for creating the infrastructure the headsets run on, and to our Producer, Jordan McCorkle for managing the install and making this exhibit a reality.
Made possible through the generous support of InteraXon, SparkIO, Alchemy Events, Puzzlebox, DigitalOcean, OpenBCI, LEAP Motion, NeuroSky, and AgentFin Consulting.
Thanks to Brain Networks Laboratory, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Lichtman Lab, and Eyewire for contributing data to the neuroimaging exhibits by 3scan.
Thanks to Dr. Randal Koene for feedback and advice on science communication, Robert Hanson for his concept art and design work, to Will Wnękowicz for creating the infrastructure the headsets run on, and to our Producer, Jordan McCorkle for managing the install and making this exhibit a reality.
Press
We've had a few lovely articles written about the exhibit:
Make Magazine: "Control a Robot Arm With Your Brain"
Berkeley Science Review: "Catch The Brainwave"
The East Bay Express: "This Is Your Brain On Science"
Exploratorium Press Office: "New Exhibition on Understanding, Influencing Brain Activity Opens at Exploratorium"
The EyeWire Blog: "EyeWire Data at the Exploratorium"
We've had a few lovely articles written about the exhibit:
Make Magazine: "Control a Robot Arm With Your Brain"
Berkeley Science Review: "Catch The Brainwave"
The East Bay Express: "This Is Your Brain On Science"
Exploratorium Press Office: "New Exhibition on Understanding, Influencing Brain Activity Opens at Exploratorium"
The EyeWire Blog: "EyeWire Data at the Exploratorium"