I’ve touched a few times on the fascinating trend emerging over recent years for recruiting the crowd to participate in cutting edge science.  One of the more interesting of these experiments is EyeWire, which is a neuroscience game whereby players are tasked with mapping neurons in the brain, with the data generated helping to bolster the scientific body of knowledge.

Whilst EyeWire has attracted hundreds of thousands of players over the last few years, a recent Canadian experiments shows that even comparatively modest crowd involvement can be beneficial.

The experiment, which was documented in a recent paper, recruited approximately 500 adults to participate in an art-science installation called My Virtual Dream.

Each participant was fitted out with an electroencephalography (EEG) headband, after which they were asked to participate in a neurofeedback experience with 19 other team mates inside a large geodesic dome.

The EEG signals of the group triggered specific artistic imagery that was displayed inside the dome, with live music accompanying the images.  The belief was that it’s better to study our brains in such a real-life environment than in a lab where our actions are much more artificial.

“In traditional lab settings, the environment is so controlled that you can lose some of the fine points of real-time brain activity that occur in a social life setting,” the researchers say.

“What we’ve done is taken the lab to the public. We collaborated with multi-media artists, made this experiment incredibly engaging, attracted highly motivated subjects which is not easy to do in the traditional lab setting, and collected useful scientific data from their experience.”

Bringing research into the wild

The authors believe their study highlights both the viability of collective neurofeedback and also the impact if can have on the brain almost immediately.

The concept of neurofeedback is increasingly popular, with a burgeoning market for wearable biofeedback devices, such as the one used in this study.  The Muse headband used provides wearers with live feedback on their specific brain state (ie relaxed or focused).  The belief is that such feedback can help the user to self-regulate their brain function according to their goals.

Each of the 500 or so participants went through this experience via the live lab.  They attempted to manipulate their mental states towards either relaxation or concentration.

Whilst the individual time of each persons participation was shorter than traditional lab experiments, the aggregated data of the participants was considerably more than would normally be acquired.

The EEG data revealed that there were indeed subtle brain activity changes after just one minute of neurofeedback learning, which is a rate of change that is much quicker than was previously expected.

“These results really open up a whole new domain of neuroscience study that actively engages the public to advance our understanding of the brain,” the authors say.

The hope now is for the experiment to go on the road, with My Virtual Dream coming to other cities around the world and continue gathering brain data in this way.