Lucas Parra Seminar

Speaker:
Lucas C. Parra, Ph.D.
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
City College of New York

Title:
On Brainwaves and Videos and Video Games

Abstract:
What are the immediate neural responses of the brain to natural stimuli, in particular audiovisual narratives and video games? To answer this question we record EEG while subjects are exposed to the identical audiovisual narratives and measure inter-subject correlation, which  captures how similarly and reliably different people respond to the same natural stimulus. We find that inter-subject correlation of EEG is strongly modulated by attention, correlates with long term memory, and provides a quantitative estimate for "engagement". During video game play, which are unique experiences that preclude correlation across subjects, we measure the strength of  stimulus-response correlations instead. We found that correlation with the stimulus is modulated by attention to the game, and is strongest during active game play.

Bio:
Lucas C. Parra is Harold Shames Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the City College of New York (CCNY). He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in 1996 with research in the area of machine learning under the guidance ofGustavo Deco. Prior to joining CCNY he worked on medical imaging at Siemens Corporate Research (1995-1997) and acoustic signal processing at Sarnoff Corporation (1997-2003).