Journal Three: January 17 - February 3, 2022

Goals for These Weeks

❖ Continue to work on mid-year presentation
❖ Research the software Muse provides
❖ Research Muse EEG product
❖ Start testing the EEG and try to get it working
❖ Track Isa Dillehay’s brain waves under different tests (problem solving and emotional video)
❖ Improve the connection between electrodes and the user’s head
❖ Research previous tests on animal’s brain waves relations to emotion
❖ Download software on home computer
❖ Start test for anger/stress in frontal lobe
❖ Continue research on animals emotions

My Research and What I Learned

In the last three weeks, I have dedicated my research to tests on animals other researchers
have completed and how we can apply it to our project. I was inspired after doing a history essay in
english. Because I already knew a good amount about EEG
machines and brainwaves, I figured doing my English paper on the
history of them would be a good way of killing two birds with one
stone. I get to complete my paper and learn something new that
would hopefully help me in this class. Luckily, I found that in
1875, Richard Caton found the “measured electrical activity in the
exposed brains of rabbits and monkeys”1 which got me thinking
about how people use EEG’s on animals and if they found a
correlation between emotions and brain waves in them. Although

1
Blaser, Larry. "Electroencephalogram (EEG)." Gale in Context: Science,
go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=Reference&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=MultiTab&hitC
ount=4&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CCX8124400872&docType=Medical
+test&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZXAR-VRL&prodId=SCIC&pageNum=1&contentSet=GALE%7CCX81
24400872&searchId=R1&userGroupName=auro90272&inPS=true. Accessed 27 Feb. 2022.
their brains are different from ours, the research would help me and Ani get a better understanding
of what we could potentially be looking for and what emotions would be easier to find.
Horses are very expressional animals, so scientists were able to tell roughly what they were
feeling. For instance, when they can’t get food they get stressed or angry and it’s pretty obvious
based on their reactions (stomping of hooves and aggressively neighing). Martine Hausberger, an
ethologist who mostly works with horses, wanted to find out why some
horses struggle with lessons or training. She teamed up with
neurophysicist Hugo Cousillas, and he made an EEG for active horses in
order to track them while one group was in fields and the other in stables.
The results were immensely different. “Horses in stables showed an
average of 2.5 times more right-hemisphere ‘gamma’ waves than those in open fields …The horses
that spent most of their time out in the open, meanwhile, showed twice as many left-hemisphere
‘theta’ waves on average”2. Gamma waves are the highest frequency waves, when the brain is
working the hardest. This may play into high
stress levels in the horses which makes sense
when thinking about how a person feels when
they’re stressed. If someone is doing challenging
school work they’re going to feel a bit warm or
maybe even develop a headache because the brain
is working so hard so your brainwaves are firing
off at a faster rate. The other horses on the other
hand, the horses free in the fields have theta brain waves which are the same as humans when they
sleep, but not the deepest sleep. This shows signs of relaxation and/or happiness in the horses.
Knowing what emotions were found and where can help us narrow down what we are looking for.
Going back to what we will be doing for our project, we need to test our EEG and get
comfortable with it. So we tried it on and worked with it for the first week and it was working fairly

2
Science.org. www.science.org/content/article/how-horse-feeling-new-mobile-brain-wave-reader-could-tell.
Accessed 27 Feb. 2022.
well on our junior subject, Isa Dillehay. When we put the EEG on her, some of the electrodes
weren’t connecting but we also didn’t put very much saline solution on it and she has very thick
and curly hair so the contact overall wasn’t great. We did two different tests on her that day. One
was to understand where to find spikes in the brainwaves by having her first relax, then testing her
with math questions. The second test was having her watch a video in hopes to find a reaction.
The first test was a little under 7 minutes. We started with having her laying down and just
relaxing for the first minute and 45 seconds. The waves were pretty flat for the most part because
there wasn’t much for her to think about in the moment, which was expected. Here is what it
looked like:

Next we had her do some simple math like long division and going over algebra two flash cards. Her
brain waves had more activity to them, just as we were hoping for:
These tests helped us determine which electrodes were working, how we use the program, and what
causes changes in the brain waves’ frequencies. After this, we continued on testing for a change due
to an emotion. We used a small clip from the Disney+ show called “Dug Days”. The clip was
essentially a dog’s owner telling him that he is his best friend and how much he loves Dug, the dog.
Some inside information on me, when I watched this clip I cried because I own dogs and I do love
them very much, so I figured because she has a dog that she also loves it might provoke an emotion.

This graph is at time 8:40, which was when she started saying things like “Awww” or making a
frowny face (this is totally academic I promise). But as you can see, there are some changes in the
brainwaves at varying patterns within about 5 seconds; the 5 seconds are what is seen on the screen
right now. This was great progress for us to see that there is a correlation between emotions and the
brain waves.
Unfortunately, the following week we came back to our electrodes having fallen apart and
only 7 of them were able to be used, and even so we couldn’t get a solid connection between them
and the user’s head. So we ordered new electrodes and are waiting for them to come in which will
be on February 28. Our next tests will be looking for changes under stress and anger because based
off of my research in these last three weeks, those will be very prominent and pretty easy to read.
Accomplishments
❖ Held our first test run on the EEG machine to get baseline data (subject was Isa Dillehay).
Our subject had to lay on the ground for the results because the EEG had to be right next to
the dongle in order for it to stay connected and because she had to relax so laying down was
the best option to get baseline results.

➢
❖ Ordered new electrodes

➢
❖ Gained solid baseline results to get comfortable with the EEG machine
 ➢
Reflection on Goals and Timeline
Ani and I are doing fairly well in terms of keeping up with our timeline, regardless of all the
changes that have been made to our studies and the class agenda. We did start testing out our EEG
to get comfortable with it and learn how we should read the data, but not too long into the process
we realized our electrodes were old and needed to be replaced so we resorted back to focusing on
research while waiting for the new pack to arrive. Along with that, we downloaded the software on
our personal devices and the connection to the EEG works better than on the school computers so
we will be continuing our tests on our laptops instead. Our new electrodes are arriving on February
26th, so we will resume testing then. We’re still working on putting together consistent tests to find
the correlation between the EEG readings and emotion. From here, we will be using videos to get
results and may have to resort to long term testing with movies. We’ll also be getting data on
ourselves while we do challenging class work, calculus and physics, to test for stress levels. Based on
my research these last three weeks, that will most likely be the easiest emotion to detect.
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