7/27/11 Surfing on Brain Waves in the Baby Pool

It's official! ZB has brain waves! This is the EEG cap that she wore today during a psych research experiment at the University of Tennessee's Neuroscience Lab. We were asked to be part of an experiment to study infant recognition, and I thought, Why not? It isn't every day you get to have your brain waves measured. (Well, we don't anyway...I can't really speak for what goes on at your crazy cocktail parties).

Anyway, they put the cap on ZB and showed her a video clip of a woman talking. Then they showed the same clip over and over and over. When she would get bored or distracted and look away, they'd cut to clips of Sesame street until she looked back at the screen, then go back to the clip of the woman. (I'm not sure what ZB's brain waves were doing during all of this, but after listening to the same 3 second clip of the woman for the 1000th time, my brain waves shut down completely). I was actually giddy with relief whenever ZB would turn her head and trigger a clip of Ernie singing "Rubber Ducky, you're the one".

Honestly, I think ZB was most interested in the tiny cape (think the ones that salons put on you for hair cuts) that they made her wear so that she wouldn't reach up and mess with the sensor wires. Woman on the screen? Pah. Dancing puppets? Eh. Momma bleeding from the ears after listening to the same clip over and over again? Nada. But a little black cape that covers her arms? Baby jackpot!

So that was our fun outing for the day. We made some grad students happy, and ZB got to play with a cape. And I got this hysterical picture:
More ammunition to mortify her with when she decides to start dating...