Noisy gymnasiums, restaurants where conversations are nearly impossible and concert halls less than perfect for the music are all acoustical problems. Now Penn State acoustical engineers are using functional MRI to better understand room acoustics and the emotions they can cause.
"Traditional methods of evaluating room acoustics use subjective rating methods and part of our study uses this method," said Michelle Vigeant, assistant professor of acoustics and architectural engineering. "The other part uses fMRI to see how changes in acoustics appear in the brain."