Investigations of human EEG response to viewing fractal patterns.
Owing to the prevalence of fractal patterns in natural scenery and their growing impact on cultures around the world, fractals constitute a common feature of our daily visual experiences, raising an important question: what responses do fractals induce in the observer? We monitored subjects' EEG while they were viewing fractals with different fractal dimensions, and the results show that significant effects could be found in the EEG even by employing relatively simple silhouette images. Patterns with a fractal dimension of 1.3 elicited the most interesting EEG, with the highest alpha in the frontal lobes but also the highest beta in the parietal area, pointing to a complicated interplay between different parts of the brain when experiencing this pattern.
Hagerhall
Caroline M
CM
Department of Landscape Architecture, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, PO Box 58, SE 23053 Alnarp, Sweden. Caroline.Hagerhall@ltj.slu.se
Laike
Thorbjörn
T
Taylor
Richard P
RP
Küller
Marianne
M
Küller
Rikard
R
Martin
Theodore P
TP
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000513:Alpha Rhythm; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001611:Beta Rhythm; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D017709:Fractals; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011601:Psychophysics; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult