Starlab

In the context of the Brain Awareness Week 2018, we organised a variety of activities for the general public to explain and explore the fascinating concept of consciousness. The event took place on 15th and 16th of March from 18:30 to 21:00 at CaixaForum, a sociocultural centre that opens its doors to conferences, workshops, and scientific events. We disseminated the event through websites, mailing lists, activity pages, and social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin). The event received a lot of attention from the public. On both days, the main conference room with a capacity of 100 people was full. The attendees interacted with researchers and experts, by asking many interesting questions, sharing their thoughts about consciousness, and also actively discussing during and after the sessions. The event hosted different activities about consciousness such as lectures given by different experts; multi-disciplinary colloquies composed of neuroscientists, anthropologists, quantum physicists, and philosophers aiming to explore different points of view; consciousness experiments; movies and documentaries; and an art space for painting, drawing, or writing. Especially, the experiments received a lot of attention from the public. We had two different experimental setups: on one station, we measured consciousness of the attendees by using electroencephalography signals and binaural bits; and on the other stations, we measured conscious vs. subliminal perception. Overall, we were very happy to see many attendees and a lot of public interest and interaction. The attendees could continue chatting and discussing with researchers or experts during the stand-up dinners organised after the event during both day

The sessions evoked a lot of curiosity about consciousness. During the talks or colloquies, the speakers received a lot of questions from the public. The cocktails organised at the same venue after the sessions created a nice environment that encouraged communication between the researchers and the general public in a more informal way.

The activities should definitely include hands-on sessions, or experiments to make it more interesting. A combination of lectures and experiments worked very well for us.