Window into the Creative Mind

Window into the Creative Mind is a live experiment exploring the neural signatures of musical creativity. Pianist Chelsea de Souza, a classical and jazz musician, wore a portable EEG cap while improvising variations on musical themes provided by the research team. The experiment was designed so that de Souza’s improvisations would get progressively farther away from the original musical theme.

Real-Time Visualization

The brain activity captured by the EEG cap was visualized and projected onto a screen in real-time by multimedia artist and composer Badie Khaleghian. Our neuroengineering team handled the full EEG data capture pipeline, from electrode setup and signal monitoring to synchronization, and contributed to designing the visual representation so that the projected brain dynamics accurately reflected the neural activity as it unfolded during the performance.

Event Details

The event at Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts included background presentations by Drs. Brandt and Contreras-Vidal, followed by a Q&A session.

Partner Institutions

• University of Houston, BRAIN Center
• The Shepherd School of Music, Rice University

Presented at SfNC 2026

This project started in March 2024 and was presented as an artistic performance at the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity (SfNC) 2026 annual meeting, Liberty to Create, in Philadelphia. The performance was funded in part by NSF IUCRC BRAIN Award #2137255.

We are currently preprocessing the collected EEG signals as part of an ongoing data descriptor and analysis paper.