A-me: Augmented Memories

A-me : Augmented memories Is an augmented reality device that lets the visitor experience stored feelings on a brain. At the intersection of science, art and technology, this project is focusing on the limits between neuroscience and psychology. The matter and the location of human memories has been shown to be linked to the experienced emotions at the time they where stored. The emergence of powerful new radiological measurement techniques (e.g., fMRI, PET, SPECT) combined with experimental techniques from cognitive psychology allows neuroscientists and psychologists to address abstract questions such as how human cognition and emotion are mapped to specific neural substrates. A-me is an emotional memory recall device. Following the state of the art knowledge on brain atlases to map out the location of human experiences this device allows the reproduction of them by providing visual and auditory feedback. An Optical See-Through display is used to overlay the virtual information into a phantom head (a medical term for a dummy head). The user will be able to navigate the brain by using a tracked probe in a similar way the neurosurgeons use it in pre-operative planning. While navigating the brain, the user will find active areas in specific parts of the nervous structure. Pointing at them with the probe will trigger an stored emotional experience in the form of a voice coming from the phantom and a visual interpretation of its neural activity.