Team

Interactive Experience Design & Programming – Benjamín Benavides Sleep Research Demonstration – Andrea Sanchez, Esteban Bullón
(Researchers from Thomas Schreiner’s Sleep Research Group at LMU Munich)

Context

At Science is Wonderful 2025, held at the Africa Museum in Brussels, Belgium, our booth invited young visitors to explore the fascinating world of sleep research. The interactive experience was designed to show children what a sleep researcher does—from measuring brain signals and visualizing data to identifying meaningful patterns. By engaging with a hands-on demonstration, kids discovered how breathing cycles influence brain activity associated with memory consolidation during sleep.

Step 1: Setup & Introduction

To kick off the experience, a volunteer was invited to wear an EEG headset that “streamed” simplified brain data. This introductory stage set the stage for the interactive journey.

Step 2: Raw Data Exploration

Once the headset was on, the raw brain activity was displayed as rapidly changing numbers. This dynamic view highlighted the concept that raw data is complex and requires processing before it becomes meaningful.

Step 3: Visualizing the Data

The same data was then transformed into a graph, making it easier for the children to start spotting patterns. This visualization bridged the gap between abstract numbers and accessible information.

Step 4: Recognizing Brain Patterns

In this step, we taught the kids to identify key brain signals by introducing two types of patterns: spindles and slow oscillations (or both). To make the process interactive, each child received flags which they could raise when they recognized one of these signals on the display.

Step 5: Interactive Breathing Simulation

To complete the experience, an interactive air pump allowed children to simulate breathing. They discovered how the transition between inhaling and exhaling influenced the brain signal patterns, mirroring the research findings from Thomas Schreiner’s sleep research group at LMU Munich.

Educational Impact

More than just a display of scientific facts, the Sleep Lab booth was designed to empower young visitors by letting them experience the process of scientific inquiry firsthand. Through data collection, visualization, pattern recognition, and interactive simulation, the children gained a practical understanding of the work of sleep researchers.

Technical Aspects

The interactive software for Sleep Lab was developed using TouchDesigner. A custom web UI, accessible with a phone, was implemented to control the experience in real time.

For measuring the state of the air pump, we integrated a time-of-flight sensor connected to an M5 Stick that sent data via OSC to TouchDesigner. The handle of the air pump—housing the sensor and a battery—was custom-designed, 3D modeled, and 3D printed.