Exhilarated (and a little exhausted!) from the Society for Neuroscience Oregon/Southwest Washington Chapter meeting, we headed next to Portland’s subterranean Doug Fir Lounge, where the decor was decidedly cortical!
And woodsy!
And welcoming!
We were there to hear the band Moon Hooch with Noggin volunteers Brittany Alperin from Behavioral Neuroscience at OHSU, and Mike Soroka, a Portland roboticist. Brittany, Mike, and saxophonist Wenzl McGowen from Moon Hooch had joined us in the classroom at Portland’s Franklin High a few weeks back to explore the brain’s electrical response to music…
LEARN MORE: Frequencies @ Franklin: Your brain on sax!
Wenzl had received six portable EEG units from a company called Muse, and Brittany and Mike were busy attaching electrodes to six concert volunteers who would be monitored during the show..!
They had tried attaching electrodes to Wenzl; however, Moon Hooch musicians move constantly during a performance, basically never pausing between songs! There would be plenty of movement-related artifact in the signal, and no opportunities to adjust contacts…
And what a show!
We hope to continue collaborating with Moon Hooch, and potentially seek Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval to conduct an experiment on the development of brain to brain EEG synchrony in listeners collectively moved by powerful and engaging music. There has been fascinating recent work on this phenomenon in the classroom, like the one we visited at Franklin High…
LEARN MORE: Brain-to-Brain Synchrony Tracks Real-World Dynamic Group Interactions in the Classroom
If you’d like to contribute to these nonprofit Noggin efforts, we would sing your praises, and hugely welcome your support! We volunteer our time, but electrodes (and art supplies, formaldehyde, paper, pipe cleaners and other items cost some dough). Donations are tax deductible… 🙂
The EIN number for Northwest Noggin is 81-3885713. Thank you in advance for fueling free, arts-integrated, research-based neuroscience education for K-12 students and the public at large…