Master Thesis Defense - August 18, 2017: To Investigate Power of Brain Activity Using EEG Comparison Between Creative and Non-Creative Design Task

Dalvir Singh

Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:00 a.m.
Room EV001.162

You are invited to attend the following M.A.Sc. (Quality Systems Engineering) thesis examination.

Examining Committee

Dr. A. Mohammadi, Chair
Dr. Y. Zeng, Supervisor
Dr. J. Yu, CIISE Examiner
Dr. H. Ge, External Examiner (BCEE)

Abstract

In recent times, neurophysiological measurement methods such as EEG and fMRI are widely used in an Engineering field to study designer’s brain activity during creative thinking. In literature, many researchers reported the synchronization and desynchronization of EEG activity in specific brain cortex during creative thinking. However, we do not find many studies associated to comparison of designer’s brain activity during creativity/non-creativity related task demands. The chief objective of present thesis is to investigate the power of brain activity using EEG comparison between creative and non-creative design task. For psychometric measures of creative thinking, Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) (Torrance, 1966) is widely used. In present thesis, we modified TTCT according to our experiment requirement. We decompose the test between creative and non-creative design task. In creative design task, designers were instructed to think creatively whereas in non-creative design task they were required to think intuitively. When designers were performing these design tasks, we obtained their EEG recordings to investigate brain activity during design tasks. The EEG powers are calculated through spectral analysis. We aggregate electrode positions to identify distribution of EEG powers among brain regions during cognitive task performance. In order to compare EEG between creative and non-creative design task using cortical area to area approach, we perform repeated measure ANOVA for within-subject factors such as design task and brain areas. However, we found non-significant interaction effect between creative/non-creative design task and cortical areas.