Experiencing the Light Through our Skin – an EEG Study of Coloured Light on Blindfolded Subjects

The work “Experiencing the Light Through our Skin – an EEG Study of Colored Light on Blindfolded Subjects” was presented at the 19th annual IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering, Athens, Greece, 28-30 October 2019.

In this study the sensations from the skin were measured through electroencephalography (EEG) to understand its contribution to our experience of light. For this experiment the subjects were blindfolded and placed in a daylight isolated room with artificial light. Here they were exposed to red, green and blue light as well as darkness. Through a temporal spectrum evolution (TSE) and a machine learning algorithm for visualizing highly dimensional data (t-SNE) the color based perception signatures were found to be distinguishable. T-SNE clustered the TSE maps into four separable segments, one for each scenario. Inside each of these clusters unique delta, theta, alpha and beta event related desynchronization and synchronization (ERD/ERS) biomarkers could be found. These biomarkers could cultivate the idea that when red and blue are sensed through the skin they elicit cortical arousal and awareness, while green promotes calmness and relaxation.

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Light4Health 1st summer school

Lighting Design MSc education at AAU Copenhagen, along with other leading LiD educations is participating in the Erasmus project “Light 4 Health” https://www.light4health.net. In the context of this project, there will be a summer school, from 29 July to 2 of August at Wolverhampton UK, with the title “Interior Lighting for Domestic Spaces”. More info at https://www.light4health.net/