Stadium EEG: Measuring Crowd Brain Waves during Football Games

[Loren Booda]

Can the aggregate brain waves from a stadium crowd register on a state-of-the-art EEG at midfield?

 

[WhoWee]

Can the aggregate brain waves from a stadium crowd register on a state-of-the-art EEG at midfield?

Loren, perhaps if you re-phrase the question slightly - Can the aggregate brain waves from a stadium crowd regarding a political decision register on a state-of-the-art EEG at midfield?

You MIGHT find there are millions of dollars available in the stimulus to study the problem?

I'm sorry, it's been a long day.

 

[Monique]

The electrical conductivity of air is extremely low, so the answer is no.

 

[WhoWee]

The electrical conductivity of air is extremely low, so the answer is no.

I assumed they would still use sensors and the question had to do with the collective information gathered?

 

[atyy]

The electrical conductivity of air is extremely low, so the answer is no.

But electromagnetic waves of may frequencies can travel a long distance through air.

 

[Moonbear]

But electromagnetic waves of may frequencies can travel a long distance through air.

The ones being detected by EEG don't. Otherwise, do you think they'd waste all that time gluing electrodes to someone's head if they could just set up a monitor next to them?

 

[atyy]

The ones being detected by EEG don't. Otherwise, do you think they'd waste all that time gluing electrodes to someone's head if they could just set up a monitor next to them?

Well, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography it looks like it's about 10 Hz, and from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_waves these are used for communicating with submarines. Maybe it's just that these signals are very small, and would be swamped by background radiation from other sources? But the OP said state of the art, and what if we helped by insulating the stadium etc., and helped by having the whole stadium do the same task synchronously - say an oddball task - what is the calculated size of the collective N100 as a function of distance?

Maybe this should be moved to classical physics

 

[russ_watters]

Well, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography it looks like it's about 10 Hz, and from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_waves these are used for communicating with submarines.

An EEG uses electrodes, not antennas and the antennas required to capture 10 hz radio waves (assuming the human brain even emits radio waves) are huge.