Design for NeuroNetworking |
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organizer: | denisakera |
date/time: | 27.-30. 4. 2012 |
place: | brmlab |
stream: | - |
“Design for NeuroNetwoking: How to Interact over Brain Data?” | 27 – 30 April 2012, Prague
“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 6
Presentations, discussions, workshop in Prague based Hackerspace http://www.Brmlab.cz in cooperation with New Media Studies, Charles University, http://www.CIANT.cz, http://www.Hacteria.org and Interactive Media Design, National University of Singapore
NeuroNetworking Workshop | 27 – 30 April 2012
Mentors
Consultations & collaborations
Brmlab
The workshop will be hold in Brmlab, Prague based Hackerspace
Photos from the Workshop
Overview
Brainstorm, prototype, test and evaluate ideas and scenarios of future services and interfaces related to brain data. Critical probes and design fictions into networking over brain data and biodata related to our brain function (fMRI, SNPs, EEG).
Prototype, evaluate and document a future service that will use brain data for social networking, neuromarketing, citizen science projects,etc.
Topics
How to support open science?
How to interact over brain (fMRI) data? How to connect them with other data (body, society, environment etc.)?
What type of interfaces and tools we can build around these data?
Who are the stakeholders, actors, users?
What type of experiences, relations, exchanges, transactions to support?
What type of social and individual identities we can create?
What is the context of interaction over such future services?
What are the ethical, legal and social challenges these interfaces create?
What is neurocapital? Neurocapitalism? Neuroemancipation?
Open Brain Data project
How to create social networking service on which people would offer brain (fMRI etc) data and combine it with SNPs, real time, sensor and QS data? What are the social, ethical, economic and other aspects, implication, scenarios? How to support open science data project and create citizen science community around this?
We uploaded a dataset of fMRI data by a volunteer, Denisa Kera, who decided to share her brain data with the hacker community as part of a challenge. The dataset http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1526632/120423DK.zip contains her 3D T1-weighted gradient-echo sequence (MP-RAGE)image of her brain in the nifti format http://nifti.nimh.nih.gov/nifti-1 , which is readable by FSL software (http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/). The challenge is: transform the nifti into some 3D web browser data and image that would support crowdsourcing of brain data, pattern recognition and comparison of brain data.
Denisa Kera would like to link her MOAO SNPs (“warrior” gene) to the fMRI scans (dorsal anterior cingulated cortex - dACC)
“MAOA-L are overly sensitive to threats or challenges that other people would shrug off, and overreact to them… unusually high levels of activity in their dorsal anterior cingulated cortex (dACC) - a part of the brain that has been linked to feelings of distress after social rejection or confrontation.”
Some articles on the issue:
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/01/saucy_study_reveals_a_gene_that_affects_aggression_after_pro.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A
I am also interested in NOS1 variant rs6490121 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22227051?dopt=Abstract
and Parkinson related genes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRRK2
How this can be done in the present
Connect these services on a web:
ImageJ & Volume Viewer (measure & compare volumes in the fMRI data & view it 3D)
myPersonality project & 23andMe/Promethease (create questionnaires for the psychological measurements & include SNP data)
Open Source Hardware hacking of brain
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ImageJ
http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/ - this is probably the best candidate that can be integrated on the webpage (Java based) so we can finally share our data. Simple to “import sequence” .IMA files via “KER_DEN.MR.UCL_BBK_MICHI.02.*.IMA” put in one place and then you can see RAW scans (thanks, Peter

Examples of Interfaces
Inspiration
Trends, Theory and Text stuff
Datasexual
http://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/meet-the-urban-datasexual
Eric Kandel: psychoanalysis, art & neurobiology
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/interview-with-eric-kandel-psychoanalysis-art-and-biology-come-together-a-859702.html
Why Won’t They Listen? ‘The Righteous Mind,’ by Jonathan Haidt
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
“Neuronal, plastic man”
http://nonsite.org/issues/issue-2/on-catherine-malabous-what-should-we-do-with-our-brain
Amateur Science
Why We Need to Stop Worrying and Love Amateur Science
http://www.amazingrust.com/Amateur_Science/Amateur_Science.html
Grassroots innovation
http://www.scidev.net/en/south-east-asia/opinions/put-grassroots-innovation-on-the-agenda.html
Interesting novel “Neuropath”, summary & discussion by Shaviro blog
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=698
“A billionaire businessman’s brain is rewired so that he is no longer capable of recognizing faces. Even in the mirror, and all the more when he looks at people around him, all he can see is the horrifying, characterizable visage of a stranger or an alien. (Prosopagnosia, or facial agnosia, is often discussed in scientific and pop-scientific writing). A porn star’s neural system is tweaked so that sensations of pain activate her brain’s pleasure and reward centers; she is led to compulsively drive herself to orgasm again and again, by slashing and mutilating herself until she dies. A fundamentalist preacher is subjected to neural firings that alternately lead him to feel the damnation of Hell and the joy of salvation. A politician prone to speechify about human dignity and moral responsibility is transformed into a cannibal who avidly devours a still-alive young girl, all the while pathetically protesting that he does not want to want to do this, that he cannot help wanting to do this. Finally, Neil straps Thomas into a machine he calls Marionette (an extrapolation from actually-existing Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation technology), that makes it possible to forcibly cycle him through a whole series of mental states, ranging from utter despair to a sense of unvanquishable well-being, from gentle benevolence to misanthropic rage, and from self-disgust to exaltation and feelings of omnipotence.”
Brain Research useful for Design
Process
Critical Design Probes, Evaluation of Prototypes, Documentation
Goals
use ethnography to understand user needs and new requirement
brainstorming to generate new design ideas and scenarios
critical design probes and prototyping to define new problems and questions
evaluation of prototypes, documentation of the work