Mental Landscapes: Virtual Reality For Neuroscience Outreach

Abstract

The impact of technology in our lives is often overestimated in the short term, and underestimated in the long term. The cutting edge technology known as Virtual Reality (VR) is one of these technologies. VR is overwhelmingly in use for entertainment, but that is not the limit of its potential. Within the domain of education VR has a wide range of possibility. The purpose of this honors thesis is to investigate various VR visualization techniques in the domain of neuroscience outreach. The goal of the project is to create virtual reality exhibits featuring content from the macro, meso, and micro scales of neuroscience research, and prototype my outreach in the Tucson community. Upon completion of this thesis project, the collected virtual scenes will be assembled to form a curated set of neuroscience exhibits referred to in its entirety as the Mental Landscapes museum. This document includes summaries of these best practices, as well as details about the subsequent changes to the Mental Landscapes project. I then provide comments on significant outreach events which this project was tested. Lastly a discussion of directions for the project following this thesis are provided as closing remarks.