Photo: Screenshot from WeChat account of People’s Daily
A theater-based immersive neuroaesthetics research program led by Tsinghua University that synchronously captures the neural activity of audience members during live performances has recently sparked heated discussions online.
Photos of eight students from Tsinghua University wearing headgear while watching a performance at a campus theater have recently sparked heated discussions online, with many wondering whether the students had dyed their hair or what kind of mysterious high-tech equipment they wear, Beijing Daily reported on Thursday.
In response to online speculation, Tsinghua clarified on Wednesday that the photos show the real-theater-based neuroaesthetics experiment, the first of its kind in the country conducted by a research team from the university.
Neuroaesthetics is an interdisciplinary field that explores how the brain perceives art and aesthetics, bridging neuroscience, psychology, and art.
The research is expected to advance new applications of technology in understanding human aesthetic experience, and further contribute to medical studies on emotional disorder rehabilitation and cognitive intervention, the Beijing Daily said.
The core of neuroaesthetics lies in understanding how humans perceive and evaluate beauty at the neural level. It seeks to apply neuroscience theories and methods to study the aesthetic experience and the brain mechanisms involved when people appreciate art, nature, or everyday objects. Today, neuroaesthetics has emerged as a key interdisciplinary field that bridges art, psychology and brain science, Science and Technology Daily reported on Thursday.
The experiment employs high-precision electroencephalograph (EEG) equipment to synchronously capture the neural activity of audience members during live performances, contributing to scientific research on brain-computer interfaces and decoding algorithms.
In the photos, the students wearing portable EEG devices on the head are enjoying the dance drama Wing Chun, which provides the audience with a captivating visual experience by integrating martial arts with classical and modern dance.
According to Gao Xiaorong, professor from the School of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University who led the study, the research aims to explore the neural activity patterns involved in the process of art appreciation through neuroscience, providing scientific support for artistic creation and arts education.
Through this interdisciplinary exploration, the research team hopes to advance new applications of technology in understanding human aesthetic experience and to open up new avenues for research in art cognition, Gao told Science and Technology Daily.
Gao has been engaged in brain-computer interface research for over 20 years. Relying on brain-computer interface technology, Gao’s research team has been dedicated to advancing the cutting-edge field of neuroaesthetics through dimensions such as signal processing and hardware development.
Before the performance, the research team recruited volunteers from diverse academic backgrounds covering the humanities, sciences, and engineering. The equipment was calibrated individually for each participant, and EEG data were collected simultaneously during the show.
All equipment used by the experiment is certified safe and intended solely for non-invasive data collection, posing no health risks to the volunteers and offering a relatively comfortable wearing experience. All data will be anonymized to ensure participants’ privacy and security.
Li Zexuan, a member of the research team told the Global Times that the immersive environment created in the theater - where lighting, stage design, and sound effects are perfectly integrated - constructs an aesthetic space isolated from the outside world. This setting allows the team to capture the audience’s most genuine and immediate neural aesthetic responses, something that is difficult to observe in traditional laboratory settings.
The results of the experiment show that when audience members are immersed in a live performance, brain activity increases significantly. This whole-brain engagement is closely linked to emotional processing, helping to explain why live performances tend to be more emotionally moving than watching videos.
The team is currently exploring applications of neuroaesthetic principles in emotional disorder rehabilitation, arts education, and cognitive intervention for the elderly. By leveraging brain-computer interfaces and related decoding algorithms, they aim to further improve the accuracy of EEG signal decoding.
原文地址：http://en.people.cn/n3/2025/0620/c90000-20330473.html