_{Djebbara, Z., Fich, L. B. and Gramann, K. (2021) ‘The brain dynamics of architectural affordances during transition’, Scientific Reports, 11(1), p. 2796. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-82504-w.}

Read the full paper here.

Action is a medium of collecting sensory information about the environment, which in turn is shaped by architectural affordances. Affordances characterize the fit between the physical structure of the body and capacities for movement and interaction with the environment, thus relying on sensorimotor processes associated with exploring the surroundings. Central to sensorimotor brain dynamics, the attentional mechanisms directing the gating function of sensory signals share neuronal resources with motor-related processes necessary to inferring the external causes of sensory signals. Such a predictive coding approach suggests that sensorimotor dynamics are sensitive to architectural affordances that support or suppress specific kinds of actions for an individual. However, how architectural affordances relate to the attentional mechanisms underlying the gating function for sensory signals remains unknown. Here we demonstrate that event-related desynchronization of alpha-band oscillations in parieto-occipital and medio-temporal regions covary with the architectural affordances. Source-level time–frequency analysis of data recorded in a motor-priming Mobile Brain/ Body Imaging experiment revealed strong event-related desynchronization of the alpha band to originate from the posterior cingulate complex, the parahippocampal region as well as the occipital cortex. Our results firstly contribute to the understanding of how the brain resolves architectural
affordances relevant to behaviour. Second, our results indicate that the alpha-band originating from the occipital cortex and parahippocampal region covaries with the architectural affordances before participants interact with the environment, whereas during the interaction, the posterior cingulate cortex and motor areas dynamically reflect the affordable behaviour. We conclude that the sensorimotor dynamics reflect behaviour-relevant features in the designed environment.

^{August, K., Djebbara, Z., Kousoulas, S., & Radman, A. (2020) ‘The Architecture of the Virtual: An Encounter between Cognitive Neurosciences and Architecture’, in 4th Ambiances Congress 2020, Ambiances, Alloaesthesia: Senses, Inventions, Worlds. Santa Barbara: Ambiances.}

Full text also found here.

Outline. The philosophies of substance presuppose a subject which then encounters a datum. This subject then reacts to the datum. The process ontology presupposes a datum (firstness) which is met with feelings (secondness), and progressively attains the unity of a subject (thirdness). It is in this sense that our bodily experience is primarily an experience of the dependence of the actual presentational immediacy upon the virtual causal efficacy, and not the other way round. To put it bluntly, the world does not emerge from the subject, but processes of subjectification emerge from the interactions between the body and world. The chapter is meant to provide the basis for the panel that will stage an encounter between cognitive neurosciences and architecture.

Introduction: Between Senses, Inventions and Worlds

Deleuze famously considered Phenomenology to be within the ancient tradition which placed light on the side of spirit and made consciousness a beam of light drawing things out of their native darkness, as it were (‘all consciousness is consciousness of something’). By contrast, he follows Bergson for whom things are luminous by themselves without anything illuminating them: “all consciousness is something, it is indistinguishable from the thing, that is from the image of light” (Deleuze, 1986: 60–61).

The philosophies of substance presuppose a subject which then encounters a datum, as Whitehead explains in his Process and Reality (Whitehead, 1978: 234). This subject then reacts to the datum. The process ontology presupposes a datum – firstness – which is met with feelings – secondness – and progressively attains the unity of a subject – thirdness (Peirce, 1905). It is in this sense that our bodily experience is primarily an experience of the dependence of presentational immediacy upon causal efficacy, and not the other way round (Whitehead, 1978: 267). To put it bluntly, the world does not emerge from the subject (as in Kant) but processes of subjectification emerge from the interactions between the body and world. This is what makes subjectification an ethico-aesthetic condition that is always temporal, intensive and individuating.

Perception is thus clearly an act of subtraction (sieve) and not of enrichment (Read and Jones, 1982: 297). It entails a selection of a flow of immediate experience out of the potential ground that is pure experience. Interestingly, this is also the current view in cognitive neurosciences: perception is the informational act of delimiting potentials (Friston, 2010 Cf. Gallagher, 2017). This means that there is less in perception than in matter. In the words of François Zourabichvili: “Mind is the membrane of the external world, rather than an autonomous gaze directed towards it” (Zourabichvili, 1996: 195). Quentin Meillassoux explains the underlying principles of such a subtractive theory of perception:

“[I]f, to pass from matter to perception, we must add something, this adjunction would be properly unthinkable, and the mystery of representation would remain entirely intact. But this is not at all the case if we pass from the first to the second term by way of a diminution, and if the representation of an image were held to be less than its simple presence. Now, if living beings constitute ‘centres of indetermination’ in the universe, then their simple presence must be understood to presuppose the suppression of all the parts of the object that are without interest for their functions […] Perception does not, as in Kant, submit sensible matter to a subjective form, because the link, the connection, the form, belongs wholly to matter. Perception does not connect, it disconnects. It does not inform a content but incises an order. It does not enrich matter, but on the contrary impoverishes it.” (Meillassoux, 2007: 72–73)

The poet William Blake wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.” According to the neuroscientist Walter Freeman such cleansing would not be desirable at all. Without the protection of the doors of perception we would be overwhelmed by eternity (Freeman, 1991). Besides, it is never necessary to distinguish all the features of an object and it would in fact be impossible to do so (Augé, 2002: 14). According to the founder of the Ecological School of Perception James Jerome Gibson, perception is economical: “Those features of a thing are noticed which distinguish it from other things that it is not – but not all the features that distinguish it from everything that it is not” (Gibson, 1966: 286).

To address this, one needs to return to the (architectural) event itself. In the traditional view, the event is decomposed into a succession of moments, each described by its own stimulus. For the event to be perceived the succession of stimuli needs somehow to be strung back together. A deus ex machina is drafted for the mysterious task of reconstituting the dynamic. By contrast, in the ecological approach the perceiver’s task is merely to detect the event as specified by information or signs. The ‘information’ here is meant in Batesonian terms, not as a code, but as a difference that makes a difference, and it is for this reason that Gibson finds ‘tuning in’ a more appropriate metaphor than ‘computing’. Our bodily units must incorporate within themselves aspects of the world beyond themselves (umwelt).

There is an intimate connection between Senses, Inventions and Worlds. In contrast to phenomenology where the problem of construction of signs becomes a problem of ‘bestowal of meaning (Sinn)’, in Deleuze’s account it is sense that is productive of signs and their meanings (Deleuze 2007, Deleuze and Guattari, 2004: 124). This distinction between sense and meaning is not purely academic nit-picking, as Colebrook cautions: “Sense is that orientation or potential that allows for the genesis of bodies but that always, if extended, would destroy the bordered organism” (Colebrook, 2010: 37). The life form itself becomes an image among other images. This special image – a Bergsonian ‘center of indetermination’ – acts as a filter creatively selecting images from the universal flux.

Our ability to distinguish the essential from the inessential is at the basis of this zeroing in. According to Antonio Damasio, the ‘sterile’ combinations do not even present themselves (Damasio, 1994: 180). However, on no account does this mean that we look on and grasp a specific aspect of the world or environment as detached and fully formed beings: “[A] being is what it is because it is already an expression of every aspect of the whole. […] Organisms are possible because they concretely embody potentialities – the power to eat, to see, to move, to think – that could have been actualized differently, and that can even be counter-actualized” (Colebrook, 2010: 84, 110). According to Colebrook, a (fully) bounded organism is but an organicist fantasy. So is bounded architecture, and that is why it would make more sense to treat it as a (semi-permeable) membrane(s) (Teyssot, 2008: 166; Clark, 2017). In other words, architecture is cognition. The question then becomes how one knows what to subtract. Is it a matter of measurement (of the extensive) or an issue of intuiting (the intensive)? More so, what is the role of architecture in perceptual subtraction and what is the role of subtraction in the production of architecture?

The Four Pitches for the (Virtual) Panel on the Virtual

Karan August: Atmospheres
The desire to frame what is with a human vantage often pulls thinking to prioritise the importance of analytical minds to an hedonistic extent, rending impossible the capacity to conceive systems of relating matter without a perceiver. Yet Atmosphere once grasped the virtual vitality of just that; not beyond the perceiver, but irrelevant to. The trick of good architecture is that an object can manifest relating parts within its systems; both those attending and those inherently able to join. Matter’s mission is not to be formed by biped, biocular, unidextrous creatures hoping to profit off cleaver jesters. However matter’s disadvantage resinates with those who’s capacity to influence their formation, be it physical, psychological, political, or prudential, is limited by context existed through networks of reinforced relations of power. That which warrants manifestation regardless of observation persist, while meaning placers peripheral glances fail to grasp the acts own meaninglessness, until that which manifest shows what can not be unseen, that which may be tangential though not incidental, affording atmosphere to shift.

Akin to a thought experiment gone awry, herd hysteria calls on seemingly familiar situations to warrant new norms. Prior signifiers in our shared surroundings and behaviours shake their projected historic meanings, while material relations remain. Is the parting of habitual patterns with newly forced rhythms what calls those to see an unfamiliar Atmosphere that has always been possible? Or are unstable material relations unbinding forced formation, affording fresh ranking of which possibilities most easily actualise? Our time is both of our making and that which we find ourselves within. If we may grant the insignificance of our role as makers of space, perhaps we may more freely engage the persistent capacity of what is to actualise. The vibrancy may overwhelm, but perhaps it will welcome more to join in the care of our collective atmospheres.

Zakaria Djebbara: A Virtual brain?
Not much different from Bergsonian process philosophy, which resonates through Whitehead’s and Deleuze’s philosophy, recent advances in cognitive neuroscience suggests that the experience of the world, including sensing ambiances, rests on the interaction between an intuitive and practical knowledge in the body and its environment. The integrative use of sensorimotor patterns in cognitive functions has recently provided a novel framework for cognition, breaking from the Cartesian non-physical interface conception of mind. The Bergsonian term ‘virtual’ refers to the qualitative multiplicity and continuity in the unfolding of time, which is strikingly similar to recent theories of cognition when applied to action. It reflects the creative process of enacted sensation, corresponding to a cascade of motor-related prediction errors in neuroscience. By casting action as motor-predictions, the negation, i.e. error detection, becomes the essential motivator for enacted sensation. Considering process philosophy, perception and action are inseparable as they converge in their functional unfolding in sensing. As the genesis of the virtual reside in negation and the sensed being entirely positive, the process of enacted perception flourish between object and subject. Once action is grasped in its complex context, it is clear that any action unfolds solely under the virtual, that is, a directed multiplicity. In turn, the virtual is never conceived without a complex range of affordances relative to the “type” of action and perception, e.g. how, by what means, and under what circumstances did she do it? Ambiances can thus be indirectly addressed by questioning these layers of action—however, the answers will only provide a peek into the complex trajectory ex post facto. Approaching sensibility via cognitive neuroscience and the virtual provides a view into the sensing of ambiances as reflected in the inhibitory cascade of motor-related prediction errors. The difficult question to this extent relates to the genesis of the directed multiplicity within the virtual during becoming.

Stavros Kousoulas: It Does not Fold Because You Say So
Inherited from Deleuze, the concept of the fold has a long history in architectural theories and practices. Unfortunately, this history does not approach the fold as a primarily architectural problem. The fold remains a purely philosophical concept that conventionally has had a merely metaphorical use in architecture. The value of the fold, of the membrane, when examined as a proper architectural problem and not merely as formalist gesture, is that it makes the architectural world, the architectural subject and all the binaries that they presuppose, collapse. In the membranic limit, the metastability of a folded architecture expresses the forces, the milieus and the territories that produce any architectural subject; in the thresholds of the fold, the vibratory affects of rhythms and their symphonic composition pulsate in order to produce surpluses of energy that can resolve the potentials of an architectural becoming. Space and time, what produces architecture and what is produced by it, no longer stand opposed but individuate along the architectural technicities that we need in order to individuate. As such, the membrane expresses the singularity of a given individual and its territory, as well as the universality of the forces that are in constant play on it. This duality, an impersonal personalisation and a singular universalization, as expressed in the membranic event, has two consequences. Firstly, one can examine an individual and its territory as a singular product — avoiding any form of essentialist, typological or hylomorphic thinking. Secondly, it can elevate the informational and affective agency of the event on a level that is independent of the singular assemblages that expressed it. In doing so, we can address affects and information as autonomous from their actualizations. In other words, we can approach the virtuality of the pre-individual refrain without the need of a method: we can intuit it.

Andrej Radman: Logic of Sense
The concept of the virtual opposes the logic of law with the logic of event: Nothing is; everything becomes. Sense is not given. It is the product of complex processes and it has to be conceived as sense-effect, or better as sense-event, that subsist as real yet incorporeal. In a nutshell, the material cause is tied to the (Stoic) incorporeal effect, which will in turn operate as a quasi-cause. The concept of quasi-cause (a.k.a. dark precursor) prevents regression into simple reductionism. It designates the pure agency of transcendental causality, the difference that relates heterogeneities. The Stoics show that things themselves are bearers of ideal events which do not exactly coincide with their properties. Any (actual) incarnation may in fact be seen as a (provisional) ‘solution’ to the problem posed by the virtual the same way that the eye is the solution to the problem of light. This is what makes the virtual not ideal but problematic. Guattari’s appropriation of Joyce’s term Chaosmosis is quite fitting for teleodynamic processes where everything seems to fold upon itself. However, this logic (if sense) must not be reduced to the Manichean opposition between the quantitative actual and qualitative virtual. The difference between the difference in degree and the difference in kind is not reducible to either. In the words of Deleuze from Difference and Repetition: “Between the two are all the degrees of difference – beneath the two lies the entire nature of difference in other words, the intensive.” And indeed, for Deleuze it is the intensive nature of difference – which binds the virtual and actual, the ideal and sensible – that supplies catalysis for individuation.

References
Augé, M., Oblivion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, [1998] 2004).
Clark, A., “How to Knit Your Own Markov Blanket: Resisting the Second Law with Metamorphic Minds.” In Philosophy and Predictive Processing, edited by T. Metzinger T, W. Wiese, 41–59. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group, 2017).
Colebrook, C., Deleuze and the Meaning of Life. London: Continuum, 2010.
Damasio, A., Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam Publishing, 1994.
Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. London, New York: Continuum [1980] 2004.
Deleuze, G., Cinema 1; The Movement-Image. London: The Athlone Press, [1983] 1986.
Deleuze, G., Proust and Signs: the Complete Text. London: Athlone, [1964] 2007.
Freeman, W., “The Physiology of Perception.” Scientific American 264(2) (1991): 78–85.
Friston, K, , “The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?” Nat Rev Neurosci. 11(2) (13 Feb 2010): 127–38.
Gallagher, S., Enactivist interventions: rethinking the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Gibson, J.J., The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.
Meillassoux, Q., “Subtraction and Contraction: Deleuze, Immanence, and Matter and Memory.” Collapse: Unknown Deleuze III (November 2007): 63–107.
Peirce, C.S., “What Pragmatism Is.” The Monist 15(2) (April 1905): 161–181.
Reed, E.S. and R. Jones, Reasons for Realism, Selected essays of James J. Gibson. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum, 1982.
Teyssot, G., “Architecture as Membrane.” In Explorations in Architecture, edited by R. Geiser, 166–75. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2008.
Whitehead, A.N., Process and Reality: an Essay in Cosmology, edited by D.R. Griffin and D.W. Sherburne. New York: Free, [1929] 1978.
Zourabichvili, F., “Six Notes on the Percept (On the Relation between the Critical and Clinical).” In Deleuze: A Critical Reader, edited by P. Patton, 188–216. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996).

^{Djebbara, Z., Parr, T. and Friston, K. (2020) ‘Anticipation in architectural experience: a computational neurophenomenology for architecture?’ Available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03852}

The perceptual experience of architecture is enacted by the sensory and motor system. When we act, we change the perceived environment according to a set of expectations that depend on our body and the built environment. The continuous process of collecting sensory information is thus based on bodily affordances. Affordances characterize the fit between the physical structure of the body and capacities for movement in the built environment. Since little has been done regarding the role of architectural design in the emergence of perceptual experience on a neuronal level, this paper offers a first step towards the role of architectural design in perceptual experience. An approach to synthesize concepts from computational neuroscience with architectural phenomenology into a computational neurophenomenology is considered. The outcome is a framework under which studies of architecture and cognitive neuroscience can be cast. In this paper, it is first argued that the experience of space is an embodied process—realized through action-perception as directed by affordances. Second, we integrate a sensorimotor contingency theory with a predictive coding architecture of the brain that in turn links the perceptual experience of forms and action possibilities with neuronal processes. Here, we argue that the sum of action possibilities and the inferred precision thereof can reflect the understanding of the designed space, while at the same time underwrite the basis for the perceptual experience. To this end, affordances are inherently related to perceptual experience. Finally, by reviewing recent empirical evidence we propose a principle of anticipation in architectural experience.

Full paper here.

^{Djebbara, Z., Fich, L. B. and Gramann, K. (2020) ‘Architectural Affordance Impacts Human Sensorimotor Brain Dynamics’, bioRxiv. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, p. 2020.10.18.344267. doi: 10.1101/2020.10.18.344267.}

Action is a medium of collecting sensory information about the environment, which in turn is shaped by architectural affordances. Affordances characterize the fit between the physical structure of the body and capacities for movement and interaction with the environment, thus relying on sensorimotor processes associated with exploring the surroundings. Central to sensorimotor brain dynamics, the attentional mechanisms directing the gating function of sensory signals share neuronal resources with motor-related processes necessary to inferring the external causes of sensory signals. Such a predictive coding approach suggests that sensorimotor dynamics are sensitive to architectural affordances that support or suppress specific kinds of actions for an individual. However, how architectural affordances relate to the attentional mechanisms underlying the gating function for sensory signals remains unknown. Here we demonstrate that event-related desynchronization of alpha-band oscillations in parieto-occipital and medio-temporal regions covary with the architectural affordances. Source-level time-frequency analysis of data recorded in a motor-priming Mobile Brain/Body Imaging experiment revealed strong event-related desynchronization of the alpha band to originate from the posterior cingulate complex and bilateral parahippocampal areas. Our results firstly contribute to the understanding of how the brain resolves architectural affordances relevant to behaviour. Second, our results indicate that the alpha-band originating from the posterior cingulate complex covaries with the architectural affordances before participants interact with the environment. During the interaction, the bilateral parahippocampal areas dynamically reflect the affordable behaviour as perceived through the visual system. We conclude that the sensorimotor dynamics are developed for processing behaviour-relevant features in the designed environment.

The full preprint can be found here.

_{Djebbara, Z., Fich, L. B. and Gramann, K. (2020) ‘Architectural affordance systematically alter parieto-occipital alpha-band desynchronization’, in ANFA 2020: Sensing spaces, perceiving place. San Diego, US: ANFA.}

Stay tuned for the full-paper with improvements!

Transitions are among the most fundamental architectural elements, as they distinguish between inside and outside (1). Over millennials, architectural transitions have been shaped by human beings in various forms, making them both ar­chitecturally and biologically attractive. Because transitions extend in time and space and depend on the human body’s capabilities to propel itself through space, we used a Mobile Brain/Body Imaging approach (MoBI; 2–4) with high-density electrocenphalography (EEG) synchronized to head mounted virtual reality to investigate the animate human transition from one space to another with varying affordances. As a continuation of previous enticing results (5), we performed a time-frequency analysis on the source-level of recorded in-actio brain activity. By varying the width of the passage, we regulated the affordances, i.e. narrow or wide openings, which allowed exploring the animate body towards transitions and to investigate how such processes are expressed in the time-frequency domain of human brain dynamics. As the alpha-band oscillations have been implicated to regulate the responsivity in sensorimotor areas, particularly as a function of predicted spatial attention (6), we hypothesized to find event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the alpha-band. Specifically, the attenuations within the alpha-band were expected to co-vary with the architectural affordances both upon perceiving the opening and well as while approaching the transition. The hypothesis retrieved from active inference (7–9) suggests that during movement, the continuous affordances are expressed as suppression of proprioceptive prediction-errors while the embodied brain becomes more certain of the environment and, thus, planned movements. Affordances in the context of the subject in this experiment can thus be interpreted as a function of top-down attention expressed in the alpha-band oscillation. Given the dependence on sensorimotor activity, e.g. action-perception, these results are particularly appealing to active inference and enactivism. Our study investigates to which extent affordances are reflected in the neuronal responses and how architecture is embedded in cortical processes.

References:

1. _{Laugier M-A. An essay on architecture. Herrmann W, Herrmann A, editors. Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls; 2009.}
2. _{Makeig S, Gramann K, Jung T-P, Sejnowski TJ, Poizner H. Linking brain, mind and behavior. Int J Psychophysiol. 2009 Aug 1;73(2):95–100.}
3. _{Gramann K, Gwin JT, Ferris DP, Oie K, Jung T-P, Lin C-T, et al. Cognition in action: imaging brain/body dynamics in mobile humans. Rev Neurosci. 2011 Jan 1;22(6):593–608.}
4. _{Gramann K, Jung T-P, Ferris DP, Lin C-T, Makeig S. Toward a new cognitive neuroscience: modeling natural brain dynamics. Front Hum Neurosci. 2014;8:444.}
5. _{Djebbara Z, Fich LB, Petrini L, Gramann K. Sensorimotor brain dynamics reflect architectural affordances. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jul 16;116(29):14769–78.}
6. _{Rohenkohl G, Nobre AC. Alpha oscillations related to anticipatory attention follow temporal expectations. J Neurosci. 2011 Oct 5;31(40):14076–84.}
7. _{Pezzulo G, Cisek P. Navigating the Affordance Landscape: Feedback Control as a Process Model of Behavior and Cognition. Trends Cogn Sci. 2016;20(6):414–24.}
8. _{Adams RA, Shipp S, Friston KJ. Predictions not commands: Active inference in the motor system. Vol. 218, Brain Structure and Function. 2013. p. 611–43.}
9. _{Friston KJ, Shiner T, FitzGerald T, Galea JM, Adams R, Brown H, et al. Dopamine, Affordance and Active Inference. Sporns O, editor. PLoS Comput Biol. 2012 Jan 5;8(1):e1002327.}

_{Jelić, A., Djebbara, Z., Fich, L., and Tvedebrink, T. (2020) ‘Placing “process” in the spotlight: Architectural education as a testing ground for cognitive science- design translation’, in ANFA 2020: Sensing spaces, perceiving place. San Diego, US: ANFA.}

As the field of neuro- and cognitive science for architecture advances, the question of how research produced can be implemented in architectural design education is ever more pertinent. Two key translational challenges can be identified. On the one hand, due to the necessarily perspectival nature of all scientific knowledge [1], the conversion of research results into design principles and guidelines results in a methodologically “biased” and reduced understanding of architectural experience, often further restricted by an interpretation of available neuroscientific and cognitive theories. At the same time, in the practice of research-based design, the translational challenge is largely influenced by the communication discrepancy between rigorous scientific, expert knowledge and the creative design process [2]; an issue often underestimated in educational programs. Moreover, “most architects/designers are not well educated in terms of research methods […] and lack the rather sophisticated skills needed to read and critically evaluate work involving the measurement of human performance, feelings, perceptions and attitudes” [3].

This contribution brings forward results of our three-year teaching experiences in the master course “Architecture, Health and Well-being” in the architectural design engineering education. The course aims to address research-to-design challenges by training students: (a) in critical reading and assessment of academic/scientific literature; (b) in scholarship merging scientific findings with architectural theories; (c) through different user experience methods [4] for “translating” and implementing research-based knowledge for creative design process.

Through analysis of (a)-(c) methods tested in the course, we ask if rethinking formats for knowledge exchange and communication from science to design can improve today’s challenges. Our conclusions indicate that students require a variety of methodological tools and respective training to handle the complexity of “translating” critical-reflective scientific thinking into creative-explorative design thinking. Our goal is to discuss how to develop design methods/tools within architecture education, which exemplify how cognitive science can inform a coherent, holistic, and creative understanding of architecture. Considering education as an important research dissemination forum and increasing focus on research-based design in professional practice, we call for addressing the “translation gap” between cognitive science and design in architectural education through more systematic research on the process of translation itself.

References

1. _{Alrøe HF, Noe E. 2014 Second-Order Science of Interdisciplinary Research: A Polyocular Framework for Wicked Problems. Constr. Found. 10, 65–76.}
2. _{Van der Linden V, Dong H, Heylighen A. 2016 From accessibility to experience: Opportunities for inclusive design in architectural practice. Nord. Arkit. (Nordic J. Archit. Res. , 33–58.}
3. _{Lawson B. 2013 Design and the Evidence. Procedia – Soc. Behav. Sci. 105, 30–37. (doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.11.004)}
4. _{Tvedebrink TDO, Jelić A. 2018 Getting under the(ir) skin: Applying personas and scenarios with body-environment research for improved understanding of users’ perspective in architectural design. Pers. Stud. 4, 5. (doi:10.21153/psj2018vol4no2art746)}

I am pleased to announce that our project that took place in Berlin Mobile Brain/Body Imaging Lab (BeMoBIL) was awarded by Brain Products. More can be read about it here.

_{Djebbara, Z. (2020). Expecting space: an enactive and active inference approach to transitions. Aalborg Universitetsforlag. Ph.d.-serien for Det Tekniske Fakultet for IT og Design, Aalborg Universitet}

The following thesis is an interdisciplinary investigation of architectural transitions cast as a composite of space and experience in time. Dispersed between philosophy, architecture and cognitive neuroscience, the thesis also attempts to provide an empirically plausible neuroscientific framework that best explains the human experience of architectural transitions. Accordingly, the thesis is neither a pure study of space nor of the human, but instead, an investigation of the dynamics that emerge between the body and space during transitions. To this end, a falsifiable hypothesis is derived from the framework and tested to assess the quality of the framework.

Throughout thousands of years, architectural transitions have been shaped
by human beings for various reasons—this makes this transhistorical both architecturally and biologically attractive. Transitions extend in time and space and depend heavily on the human body’s capabilities to propel itself through space. For this reason, the emerging experience caused by transitions is analysed as a composite of space and time, which biologically translates to an investigation of action-perception. A phenomenological approach to the emergence of perception over time establishes conditions for an empirically plausible neuroscientific framework, which in turn provides a meaningful explanation of the dynamics between human experience and architectural transitions. Indeed, the following thesis is an attempt to synthesise phenomenological arguments with a prominent theory of brain activity. Active inference, as a computational approach to cognition and cortical activity, is attempted bridged with enactivism, which is a phenomenological and sensorimotor account of experience, to demonstrate how the environment emerges as an experience in the dynamics themselves. Essentially, transitions in the human experience, as a structure of change, are argued to be the genesis of experience itself—transitions become both the question and the answer, albeit, on different terms.

The phenomenological framework is heavily based on the temporal nature
in human experience and its characterisation as inherently bodily, i.e. the world emerges through an active experience through enactive sensory systems. If the dynamics of enactive biological systems are affected by architectural design, it implies that architectural design can affect the human experience through short term processes, on which the long-term processes, e.g. the psychological expectation of space, are based.

The free energy principle, i.e. active inference, is an application of Bayes’ theorem to investigate biological systems through computational models. Portraying the human body as a dynamic system that must resist environmental disorder through homeostasis, fundamental processes as action-perception can be described as the consequential outcome of minimising uncertainty about the environment.

On a cellular level, the process of emergence is the outcome of dynamic self-organising systems, which is the very foundation of action-perception. By providing a thorough analysis of the computational process, it is revealed that knowing how is inherently different from knowing that, which indeed makes the computational approach more appealing as it aligns with the philosophical and enactive account of human experience. Active inference is essentially demonstrated to fit an embodied, embedded, enactive and extended account of cognition, rather than a traditional sandwich-model account to cognition.

In sum, the thesis may be taken as (1) an account of how architectural research may go beyond traditional methods and address questions that are currently not in the vocabulary of architects, (2) a computational neurophenomenological account of experience that provides a meaningful explanation of the emergence of architectural experience and (3) an answer to how do architecture impact experience and body on a sensory-level, from how the world is perceived.

The full PhD thesis can be downloaded here and here.

_{Djebbara, Z., Brorson Fich, L., Petrini, L., & Gramann, K. (2019). Sensorimotor brain dynamics reflect architectural affordances. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(29), 14769-14778.}

Anticipating meaningful actions in the environment is an essential function of the brain. Such predictive mechanisms originate from the motor system and allow for inferring actions from environmental affordances, and the potential to act within a specific environment. Using architecture, we provide a unique perspective on the ongoing debate in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy on whether cognition depends on movement or is decoupled from our physical structure. To investigate cognitive processes associated with architectural affordances, we used a mobile brain/body imaging approach recording brain activity synchronized to head-mounted displays. Participants perceived and acted on virtual transitions ranging from nonpassable to easily passable. We found that early sensory brain activity, on revealing the environment and before actual movement, differed as a function of affordances. In addition, movement through transitions was preceded by a motor-related negative component that also depended on affordances. Our results suggest that potential actions afforded by an environment influence perception.

Full paper available here.

^{Djebbara, Z., Brorson Fich, L., & Gramann, K. (2019). Understanding Perceptual Experience of Art Using Mobile Brain/Body Imaging. I A. Nijholt (red.), Brain Art: Brain-Computer Interfaces for Artistic Expression (s. 265-282). [9] Springer.}

This chapter draws on the importance of movement for human perceptual
experience and how it influences brain dynamics. By use of Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI), artists with interest in the experience of art can get insights into human cortical activity during artworks. Specifically, art that depends on action faces challenges regarding the exploration of human brain activity during their artistic acts or performances. We give an account of how architectural experience, which essentially rests on perception and movement, can be investigated using a MoBI method. We present results from studies that indicate fundamental differences in cognitive and behavioural responses when comparing active behaviour compared to passive perception. Consideration of the processes underlying movement and cognition suggests that action alters perception, which in turn alters experience. MoBI is therefore able to reveal aspects of natural cognition, which would otherwise go unnoticed highlighting the advantage of using MoBI in animate forms of art.

Full paper available here.