We all have emotions. Emotions are very important for us in daily life. How can you, for example, ever have a partner or raising a kid without knowing a lot about emotions? Knowing what these emotions are is therefore important for many reasons. It is useful for, for example, therapeutic purposes and for entertainment. Therefore, we would like to do research on human emotions.  We will focus on a specific kind of emotions: the emotions you have while looking to pictures of emotions (pictures of a violet setting, a happy family, a sad woman, and many more...). By analyzing the brainwaves corresponding to these emotions, we will get more insight in human emotions. One way to do this is to use computers to identify what brainwaves correspond to which picture. The computer will make up a database of groups of pictures with a certain emotions and their matching brainwaves. This database can be used for multiple reasons, under which its use as search tool.

In our research project we will go a step further. We would like to give this research an extra dimension by using a game setting. A game setting gives a more realistic overview of the brainwaves corresponding to visual pictures, because it is a better reflection of the real and dynamic society. This can be said, because social interactions can be considered as games. For this purpose, we would like to use the game ‘Concentration’, also known as ‘Memory’, ‘Pelmanism’, or simply ‘Pairs’. It is a card game in which all of the cards are laid face down on a surface and two cards are flipped face up over each turn. Our plan is to design a version of this game with cards that show various emotional pictures. This brings us to our research questions:

Are the brainwaves corresponding to certain visual pictures of various subjects comparable and can you find a pattern?

We expect that the brainwaves are comparable and that we can find a pattern.

Are the brainwaves corresponding to certain visual pictures different in a game setting than in a passive experimental setting? With a passive experimental setting, we mean a setting in which no game or other dynamic framework is involved.

We expect that the brainwaves in a game setting differ from the brainwaves in a passive experimental setting, since a game setting represents a dynamic world, while a passive experimental setting does not.

 The final report of our group can be see here:

 http://staff.science.uva.nl/~ghebreab/ICC2010/WorkingNeurons.pdf

 The final presentation is included in the attachment below