[H-TT16] Geographic Information System and Cartography

[HTT16-03] Method to Analysis Preconceptions about Urban Spaces by EEG Measurements

*Shotaro Otsuji¹, Kazunari Tanaka¹ (1.Osaka Institute of Technology)

Keywords:EEG, Preconceptions, Urban Spaces

The pandemic caused by the covid-19 virus has changed our lives dramatically. Most jobs, schools and events forced people to refrain from going out of the office, resulting in the spread of remoting. The concept and technology of telework and online classes quickly spread throughout society. Compared to the early stages of the pandemic, vaccination coverage has increased and, partly due to this, the threat of new coronaviruses is diminishing. As of 2023, an increasing number of initiatives are using the benefits of remoting in combination with traditional initiatives. And they are being introduced not only to work and school, but also to everyday entertainment such as music events and sports games. We focused on the concept of remoting. We thought that by using remoting technology to experience the visual and sound environment of a wide variety of spaces, it would be possible to reproduce people's comfortable environment without being restricted by location or time. We have previously focused on the sound environment as an element of space and conducted experiments to analyse differences in the appearance of α-waves in brain waves in order to measure comfort when listening to recorded sound environments. As a result, the influence of individual differences in the subjects was strongly reflected in the way the EEG appeared. This may be due to the different images the subjects had of the target sound environment before listening to the sound, in other words, they were greatly influenced by their preconceptions.
In this study, an experiment was conducted to examine differences in preconceptions when viewing a wide variety of pre-recorded spaces from the perspective of human psychological and physiological responses. A simple EEG measuring instrument (EMOTIV EPOC X) and dedicated software EMOTIVPRO were used in the experiment. In investigating spatial comfort, human brain waves are one of the easiest physiological responses to deal with. For this reason, research focusing on EEG and comfort has been conducted in various ways for some time. However, among the EEG-related references, few have yet focused on the effects of preconceptions. Therefore, in this study, we conducted an EEG measurement experiment focusing on the preoccupation with urban space, which is also our field of expertise. The results of the analysis revealed a relationship between EEG measurements and the preconceptions people have about the recorded and recorded urban space.