Project Doona Bae (2021)
Behavioral and fMRI study assessing empathic abilities of actress Bae Doona; featured as a book chapter.
Year: 2021. Role: Project leader. Subject: Actress Bae Doona (배두나). Methods: Behavioral assays + fMRI (KAIST Brain Dynamics Laboratory).
Project
A neuroscience-meets-art collaboration assessing empathic and observational abilities of a working actress. Behavioral tests + fMRI scanning were designed to probe whether trained acting practice correlates with neural activation patterns associated with theory-of-mind and emotional inference.
Output
The findings appear as a chapter (“Doona Bae’s brain”) in the book Actress Doona Bae — a hybrid work combining art-criticism and neuroscience, written for general readers.
Notes
This project sits at an unusual intersection: rigorous neuroscience methods applied to a single high-engagement subject (a case study), framed for a non-academic audience. It taught me a great deal about how to write about neuroscience without losing precision.
