CONTRIBUTION OF NEUROSCIENCE RELATED TECHNOLOGIES TO CARTOGRAPHY

Abstract

Neuroscience is very promising for cognitive cartography. How and which parts of our brain works when interacting with map-related tasks is directly correlated with the neurons responsible for our mental maps. As visualization is a cognitive process, user centered design (UCD) plays an important role in usability research. How our brain can cope with huge data and how it picks up certain information is a subject of attention that can be either overt and covert. Overt attention can externally be observed and measured by a commonly used eye tracking method, whereas covert attention is not visible from outside and measured by neuroscientific methods. This paper aims to investigate the use of neuroscientific methods (EEG, fMRI and eye tracking) for usability of cartographic visualizations and their contribution to usability research. The research also introduces the possibilities of integrating eye tracking with EEG and fMRI in order to gain a better insight of map-user behaviors.