Showcasing impressive capabilities that inspired innovative research

It was an exciting day for the students enrolled in the Science Communications class. A crowd from a mix of human behaviour, psychology and neuroscience backgrounds gathered at the LIVELab entrance, eager to learn about its outstanding facilities and capabilities.

Situated on the second floor of the Psychology Building, this state-of-the-art research auditorium stands out among many buildings at the Hamilton university. The large LIVELab sign on the glass wall protruding from the building itself attracts passers-by’s attention.

The guided tour started with a brief history and the overall construction of the venue. Essentially suspended in mid-air, the LIVELab sits on damping mechanisms that separate it from the rest of the building structures. The SciComm students were amazed by the quietness it could achieve when the technicians switched off all audiovisual equipment, a testimony of its ability to seal itself from unnecessary influence. This level of isolation, specifically engineered to minimize outside disturbances, is critical for collecting scientific experiments using sensitive equipment. The LIVELab is equipped to collect multiple streams of electroencephalography or EEG, simultaneously measuring brain activity without physical intrusion for a large audience.

LIVELab is a fantastic tool to fulfill researchers’ ambitions to conduct large-scale memory and attention research, including those of Dhindsa and colleagues. In a paper published in 2019, they recorded 15 simultaneous EEGs to study the mind wandering during lectures. The volunteers would wear a cap with embedded electrodes connected to computers beneath the floor panels. They were continuously asked to report their cognitive state, i.e., whether they were paying attention to the lecturer.

The students from the SciComm class sat in the exact seats where the experiments took place. A short film commencing the opening of the LIVELab in 2014 demonstrated its design and capability, followed by a series of live demonstrations. The tens of hundreds of speakers mounted on the walls and the ceiling can emulate some truly transcending sounds: with full Dolby Atmos support, the technician played a song that fully immersed the audience. Other sound effects – loud as helicopters flying right above you and quiet as an annoying mosquito jumping in between your ears – were near-perfect recreations of such noises in a controlled environment. The incredible potential of the LIVELab left a deep impression on the touring students.

Dhindsa, a faculty of the Department of Surgery, McMaster University, along with colleagues and collaborators from other institutions, uncovered that people’s minds wander on average 35% of the time. Individual mind wandering, however, largely depends on the person’s interest in the content, among other factors. Using the vast amount of brain activity data collected utilizing the EEG caps in the LIVELab, they were able to create a computational model to detect mind wandering simply through the electrical signals of the brain. This achievement shed light on the potential to use a similar model to monitor an individual’s attention in real-time.

The auditorium is not the only place where magic happens. Neighbouring it to the northwest is the dance studio. A student from the SciComm class volunteered for a live motion capture. Multiple LiDAR sensors mounted inside the dance studio accurately capture the movement based on the wearable reflective markers and render it on a computer screen concurrently, with an accuracy of millimetres.

Without the capabilities and support of the LIVELab, the research conducted by Dhindsa and colleagues would be near-impossible. The incredible planning that went into constructing a unique space, combined with the flexibility to perform various functions, has made the research-centric theatre a valuable asset to members of McMaster University and the broader scientific community through collaborations.

Dhindsa, K., Acai, A., Wagner, N., Bosynak, D., Kelly, S., Bhandari, M., Petrisor, B., & Sonnadara, R. R. (2019). Individualized pattern recognition for detecting mind wandering from EEG during live lectures. PLOS ONE, 14(9), e0222276. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222276