Interior Design for Q-Lab Research Environment with Studio Elsewhere. Studio Elsewhere partnered with Center for Advanced Circuit Therapeutics (C-ACT) to create Q-Lab, an immersive and interactive research environment that provides a comprehensive assessment and rehabilitative care for deep brain stimulation (DBS) patients and surgery candidates across a range of medication resistant cases of neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression and Parkinson's disease. In collaboration with MD Helen S. Mayberg, a neurologist renowned for her study of brain circuits in depression, we engineered Q-Lab as a multi multimodal environment that allows scientists to quantitatively measure body movement through real-time body-tracking, facial movement through video analysis, emotion and voice modulations through audio analysis as patients engage with immersive and interactive experiences.

The interior of the lab was inspired by the architecture of Japanese tea houses and gardens landscapes and offers patients a restorative experience during their assessment sessions. Unlike traditional research lab visits where patients are subjected to repetitive tests and tasks that have no parallels to the task of every day life, Q-Lab allows the patient and the scientist go through the assessment routine in more casual, naturalistic ways. Q-Lab includes three custom bio-experiential immersive experiences, modules, which are coupled with robust bio information data-collection platform that allows for vast amounts of structured and open-ended data to be amassed and processed through traditional data analysis and AI models. This enables to scientists to detect more subtle changes in patients behavior than can be observed with conventional approaches, and adjusts patients treatment plan accordingly.

Q-Lab will also serve as an incubator for new research projects at C-ACT, with a particular emphasis on developing novel biomarkers to guide patient recovery, monitor treatment response, and understand mechanism of brain recovery.