Surprising Minds, an exhibit at Sea Life Brighton

Since December 2016, I’ve been working with Daniel Osorio (Sussex University) and Kerry Perkins (Brighton Sea Life Center) to study cuttlefish in an aquarium setting. Our goal is to combine principles from marine husbandry, neuroscience, and citizen science to design a non-invasive study of intelligent behavior that engages both experts and the general public.

Our first project together was an interactive science exhibit that prototypes a way to conduct neuroscientific explorations of human behaviour “in the wild”. You can learn more by visiting the Surprising Minds exhibit page on the Every Mind Online website.

The following video is part of the Surprising Minds exhibit. It summarizes the Cuttle Shuttle project, and introduces the ideas behind Surprising Minds.

The next video shows an example of the data we have collected from this exhibit:

The exhibit ran its first round of human psychophysics experiments during the summer of 2017. This initial pilot was so popular that the exhibit is now a permanent display at Sea Life Brighton. We plan to use the interactive station for more human psychophysics experiments, which will be documented both here and on the Surprising Minds exhibit website. Stay tuned!