2025 (Current Year) Faculty Courses School of Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate major in Mechanical Engineering
Human Brain Functions and Their Measurements
- Academic unit or major
- Graduate major in Mechanical Engineering
- Instructor(s)
- Takako Yoshida
- Class Format
- Lecture
- Media-enhanced courses
- -
- Day of week/Period
(Classrooms) - Class
- -
- Course Code
- MEC.L431
- Number of credits
- 100
- Course offered
- 2025
- Offered quarter
- 3Q
- Syllabus updated
- Apr 3, 2025
- Language
- English
Syllabus
Course overview and goals
Robust, qualitative, psychophysical assessment on the relationship between the physical environment and the user’s subjective experience is one of the core skills to optimize the machine usability, design, interface, etc. This course focuses on the latest brain science and human-machine integrated system topics related to it and, shows some of the methods and limitations to assess the human internal process.
Course description and aims
To understand the human subjective experiences and their scientific measurement methods, not for the basic brain science purpose but also for the applied purpose such as user experience assessment for the artificial system.
Keywords
Brain science, perception and psychophysics, vision, haptic, multimodal perception process, embodiment
Competencies
- Specialist skills
- Intercultural skills
- Communication skills
- Critical thinking skills
- Practical and/or problem-solving skills
Class flow
Each week, students experience a couple of human perception demonstrations and discuss on it in English. The classes are sometimes held in some of the research facilities such as motion capture room, fMRI brain scanning room etc..
Course schedule/Objectives
| Course schedule | Objectives | |
|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | Human sensory systems and internal model, How human vision is different from the camera | Understanding the difference between human vision and camera. |
| Class 2 | Eye movement, visual attention, and usability test, brain conscious process capacity | To understand the human eye movement and visual attention. |
| Class 3 | Color perception, 3D perception, and their applications | To understand the human visual perception and their applications including computer vision. |
| Class 4 | Biological motion, Motion perception, motion capture techniques, and robot design | To understand how rich the human body movement information is by biological motion. |
| Class 5 | Active and passive touch, crossmodal perception and haptic virtual reality | To understand the design of the multimodal displays. |
| Class 6 | Psychophysical methods and brain imaging methods | To understand the varieties of psychophysics method, brain imaging method, and their visualization. |
| Class 7 | Human self-body perception, social brain and theory of mind as a ghost in the machine, brain and body hack by the machine | To understand how our sense of "me" can be evoked in our physical brain and body organs, especially in virtual reality. |
Study advice (preparation and review)
To enhance effective learning, students are encouraged to spend approximately 100 minutes preparing for class and another 100 minutes reviewing class content afterwards (including assignments) for each class.
They should do so by referring to textbooks and other course material.
Textbook(s)
N/A
Reference books, course materials, etc.
Handouts
Evaluation methods and criteria
Grading is based on 100% from papers.
Related courses
- MEC.H231 ： Design Engineering
- MEC.L331 ： Basic Bioengineering
- HCB.M461 ： Laboratory Training on Human Brain Functions and Their Measurements
- LAT.A405 ： Cognitive Psychology
- ICT.H313 ： Sensation and Perception Systems
- ICT.H411 ： Basic Sensation Informatics
- ICT.H422 ： Computational Brain
- SCE.I531 ： Computer Vision
- CSC.T421 ： Human Computer Interaction
- LST.A410 ： Advanced Neuroscience
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge on the cognitive science, human perception, and statistics essential.
Other
It's preferable to take "Laboratory Training on Human Brain Functions and Their Measurements" as well. One of the lecture is in O'Okayama area to try hands on demonstrations. Students can ask questions even after the class.