Computational Architectural Neuroscience: Towards the Computational Theory of the Human Brain Interactions with Architectural Design

This article illustrates the opportunities and the challenges in an emerging multidisciplinary research area in study of human brain interactions with architectural design: Computational Architectural Neuroscience. We propose to apply main-stream methods from computational neuroscience to transform the commonly static formulation of the interior design evaluation problem into a dynamical systems formulation, which is the hallmark of modeling brain response and human behavior. While navigating indoors, observers experience perceptual features that often represent a synthesis of their visual perception of natural scenes, which are shaped and guided by the design and creativity of the architects. We propose to analyze the dynamic patterns of brain-generated signals in relation to perception of harmony of a design and decision making by human observers. We argue the feasibility of the methodology and efficiency of proposed algorithms to provide a quantitative theory of interior design evaluation in the cases considered below.