Get lost ... and get better architecture

Bryn Nelson Columnist

Getting test subjects lost in a virtual building could reveal a lot about how to construct more people-friendly hospitals, schools and other spaces, according to a unique collaboration by a group of California neuroscientists and architectural designers.

The merging of neuroscience, architecture, psychology and virtual reality is allowing researchers to track the brain signals of study participants as they navigate through a simulated building within a high-tech room called the StarCAVE.

“Our goal is to measure the human response to architectural features in a way that we’ve been unable to measure before,” said Eve Edelstein, the project’s intermediary and senior vice president of research and design for Ontario, Calif.-based HMC Architects.

The project should provide a more realistic understanding of how people experience real-world spaces — before a single brick is ever laid, said Edelstein, a trained neurophysiologist and a visiting scholar at the University of California at San Diego.

The inclusion of electroencephalography (EEG) measurements will allow researchers to look at how brain signals change when people know where they are versus when they’re utterly lost.

Beyond the cost advantages of determining before construction begins whether a proposed layout is hopelessly confusing, the science could say plenty about how people navigate through, interact with, and form “cognitive maps” of physical spaces and their virtual stand-ins.

Pinar Istek/Calit2 A test subject navigates through a far more ambiguous corridor offering few orientation cues in the virtual "way-finding" study. As the obvious cues diminished, some study subjects relied on cues as subtle as the carpet patterning.

For a pilot study testing the feasibility of such an approach, Edelstein joined collaborators at the university’s Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience and at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, abbreviated Calit2. The first order of business: designing a virtual replica of Calit2’s campus headquarters and projecting it within StarCAVE, a five-sided chamber the size of a small bedroom. Within the room’s slightly inward-tilting space, stereoscopic images displayed on 15 large wall panels and two floor screens immerse viewers wearing polarized glasses in a virtual environment.

The researchers also outfitted study participants with a swim cap-like hat connected to 256 dangling EEG electrodes to measure brain activity. A tracking device on the cap pinpointed the position of each volunteer, while a set of cameras captured head movements to follow their gazes.

“It gives us an opportunity to look at an interesting brain response and ask what the subject is looking at,” Edelstein said.

Alternatively, researchers can detect when an architectural feature is perceived and how it is being analyzed by the observer’s brain.

Neuroscience, she said, traditionally taught that humans could not grow new nerve cells through adulthood. But more recent research suggests that the adult brain is still malleable, spurring researchers like her to ask how architecture can influence the formation of new nerve cells in areas such as the brain’s memory center.

From a practical standpoint, Edelstein said, more scientifically grounded data could be critical in addressing priorities in a hospital, like the goal of dramatically reducing patient injuries, medical errors and infection rates cited by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 100,000 Lives Campaign.

Most medical centers and healthcare facilities focus on signs to help people find their way, she said. Other public spaces, including hospitals, sometimes use colored stripes on the floors as navigational aids.

Studies suggest that ineffective visual cues can cost a hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars annually as staff members take time from their jobs to redirect lost patients. Even more ominously, Edelstein said, “the cost of getting lost in a healthcare setting can be life-threatening.” Someone with an infectious disease could wander into a hospital area that should be a clean environment, for example, or a desperately ill patient may be unable to find the appropriate caregiver in time.

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