Architectural Affordances and Brain Dynamics: A Mobile Brain/Body Imaging approach to architectural affordances

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Abstract

In 1889, Bergson (1,2) suggested that perception is bound by the utility of the body, which he coined virtual action, referring to perception itself as emerging from all the possible actions upon the object. Almost 80 years later, Gibson’s theory of affordances (3) concurred the same practical view by way of his theory on direct perception. Their positions share that the body and the perceptual apparatuses are constantly enacted, which consequently locates action in perception. Perception, which is a continuous process, becomes an integration of both sensations, to constitute the stability of the perception, and of an immediate future in the shape of actions—thus, perception is inherently a sensorimotor process. Similarly from an enactivist’s view, the preconditions of experience, including experiencing architecture, are rooted in the active processes of sensations and the mobility of the body (4). As the sensorimotor activity involved in perception can be considered intelligently practical, architectural affordances are hypothesized to be reflected in the sensorimotor activity. To investigate this, we used a combination of Virtual Reality (VR) and Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) (5–7), which employs a wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) system, to address architectural affordances. Participants were asked to pass from one space to another in VR through three varying door-widths as transitions. Of the three door-widths, only one condition was unpassable, while the other two ranged from difficult to easily passable. We recorded the brain activity the moment the participants were presented with the respective door width, and of the period of approaching the door. In this experiment, the three possible door-widths illustrate the set of virtual actions, whereas the affordances, i.e. utility relative to a goal, are reflected in the motor-related potentials to succeed in transitioning. Our initial analyses in the time-domain suggested that no-affordances are processed significantly different from having affordances (8). We hypothesized that while approaching the door, the continuous affordances are expressed as suppression of proprioceptive prediction-errors. As the alpha-band has been linked with predicted spatial attention over sensorimotor areas (9), we thus expected to find event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the alpha-band over sensorimotor areas while approaching the transition. Source-level time–frequency analysis of data recorded in a motor-priming Mobile Brain/Body Imaging experiment revealed strong ERD of the alpha band to originate from the posterior cingulate complex, the parahippocampal region as well as the occipital cortex. Our results suggest that the rationale behind the cortical response and perceived design follows an affordance-like pattern, i.e. human beings are enacted organisms whose primary concern involves answering, “How can I act”, which in turn composes the preconditions of perception, “What do I perceive”. In the context of architecture, since perceptual processes were shown to be modulated by affordances, our results suggest that perception of architecture can be conceived as continuous suppression of virtual actions expressed as proprioceptive predictions. Essentially, the interaction with the world is intelligently practical and practically intelligent in the sense that mobility is at the heart of perceptual processes.

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KonferenceMobile Brain/Body Imaging Conference
Periode07/06/2021 → …
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