Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: DANIEL SOARES BRANDAO

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : DANIEL SOARES BRANDAO
DATE: 04/03/2020
TIME: 16:00
LOCAL: ICe
TITLE:

Analysis of electroencephalographic patterns and dream content to assess the interaction between sleep and behavior during a prey and predator simulation

KEY WORDS:

Sleep, dreams, video games, electroencephalography, microstates

PAGES: 57
BIG AREA: Ciências Biológicas
AREA: Biologia Geral
SUMMARY:

Sleep is an important mental and body state for the elimination of toxins generated by metabolism and for the consolidation of memories. It is a very conserved state throughout the animal evolution, being present in all species of reptiles, birds and mammals already studied. Due to its high evolutionary preservation, sleep is very likely to have influenced the constitution of the different behaviors found in animals. For example, would the different habits of prey and predators have been influenced by sleep? And for dreams? Scientific research has not yet found robust differences in the sleep of prey and predators. However, the possibilities of research in humans can be a potential source of discoveries in this area. First, because human beings can communicate their dreams to us. In addition, it is possible to elaborate complex tasks using video games, which simulate different situations that would be difficult to do otherwise. In this sense, experiments were carried out with 17 pairs of volunteers, who came to the laboratory simultaneously and had their brain activity recorded through electroencephalography (EEG). During registration the pair played an electronic game for 45 minutes, then slept for 2 hours and then played again for another 45 minutes. In the game, one of the participants acted as a prey and the other as a predator. The prey could strike the opponent with punches only, while the predator struck with punches and a firearm. Therefore, the predator had an advantage in the dispute, just as it is in nature. The EEG signals were analyzed using a technique called microstates. It classifies the recording time as a sequence of 4 electrical activity settings, called “A”, “B”, “C“ and “D”. The dream reports of the participants who dreamed were also evaluated, using a technique known as cosine similarity. This technique evaluates the semantic distance of a text to a keyword, generating a metric that indicates how similar the meaning of the words in the text to the keyword is. In this way, it was evaluated how similar the dream reports were to some keywords. One of the words tested was the word game, which is a way of making it possible to analyze how much the participants dreamed of the game. Some significant results were found. Among these, it is worth mentioning the positive correlation found between the percentage of time covered by microstate A and the difference in the number of predator deaths between game 2 and game 1. This correlation was found both by evaluating the differences in microstate properties between game 2 and game 1 (rho: 0.5, p: 0.048), as evaluating these properties during sleep (rho: 0.5, p: 0.043). A negative correlation was also found between the distance from dream reports to the word game and the difference in the number of deaths between game 2 and game 1, for prey (rho: - 0.7, p: 0.004). These results indicate that brain activity and dream content influence the behavior of individuals subjected to both prey and predator roles. The activity of the “A” microstate, characterized by a greater activity of the temporal cortex, influences in worsening the performance of the predator. On the other hand, dreaming about the game promotes an improvement in the performance of the prey. Additional analyzes will be carried out to understand these results.

BANKING MEMBERS:
Externo ao Programa - 1243905 - DRAULIO BARROS DE ARAUJO
Interno - 3083298 - RENAN CIPRIANO MOIOLI
Presidente - 1660044 - SIDARTA TOLLENDAL GOMES RIBEIRO