دکتر علی یونسی

For centuries, architects have acknowledged the effects of the buildings in which we live, learn, work, and worship. How we feel, how we behave in these spaces, what energizing interactions within our bodies occur in these spaces, and our inspirations from these spaces, are very important today for architects and neuroscientists. The application of neuroscience, psychology, and architecture acquires a new trend called neuroarchitecture. This knowledge focuses on the design of architectural structures, humans, and seeks to design spaces with maximum efficiency and positive effects on space users. In this research, with the approach of neuroscience and with a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods (correlation and laboratory) to the category of how to use architectural elements (such as light, geometry, color, materials, etc.) to evaluate the sense of spirituality in mosques (Dome) is addressed. The important point in this research is the use of neuroscience and laboratory tools in examining the emotions of users in space. The effect of the factors affecting the "feeling of spirituality" in the architectural space due to the changes in human brain signals is a matter between interdisciplinary and completely scientific and laboratory. The main purpose of neuroscience is to extract invisible information from the human brain. Therefore, no questions or questionnaires or interviews are taken from individuals, but information is extracted directly and without any intermediaries.At the beginning of the research by the descriptive method refers to the types of brain signals and brain functions and previous research will be done in the background. in the first phase, by selecting a mosque related to the past (Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque of Isfahan) and a contemporary mosque (Al-Jawad Mosque of Tehran), through expert questionnaire and ANP method and SuperDecision software to determine the order of effective architectural components The perception of spirituality in the interior of these two mosques has been discussed. Then, in the second phase, in order to diagnose the emotions of people in selected mosques, laboratory work was performed by EEG-VR method, which means simultaneous use of electroencephalography and virtual reality devices. The subjects included 24 people (12 men and 12 women). Then, the data obtained from the experiment in MATLAB software were analyzed and  then, for interpretation of information and by inferential statistics, multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypothesis. In the third phase, the results of the first and second phases are merged and discussed. At the end of the study, it was concluded that there is a significant relationship between how to use architectural elements (light, color, materials, geometry, etc.) and promote a sense of spirituality in the interior of mosques and the mosque belongs to the past (Sheikh Lotfollah ) Has a greater sense of spirituality among the subjects than the contemporary mosque (Al-Jawad). It was also found that the use of emerging neuroscience knowledge in architectural research and the use of medical tools such as electroencephalography as well as new virtual reality technology, can be very effective in discovering human emotions and feelings.

The design of mosques in the history of Iranian architecture seems to be the Climax of Islamic art and architecture. The architecture of mosques seeks inspiration of concepts of the divine world in order to create an atmosphere that connect the material world to the immaterial world and creates a single spiritual space. In this study, the effect of factors affecting the perception of spirituality in the interior of Nasir Al-Molk Mosque in Shiraz has been investigated. In this regard, first the parameters that affect the perception of the sense of spirituality are determined and then 120 questionnaires are collected from architecture and urban planning students of Shiraz University, the validity and reliability of which has been confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha. Then, by modeling the structural equations of partial least squares (PLS-SEM), it is analyzed to determine the relationship between the parameters on each other. Factors affecting the perception of spirituality are social, sensory, somatic and environmental factors that the results show that there is a significant difference in the ranking of indicators. In the following, the indicators are arranged based on the degree of impact on the perception of spirituality from rank 1 meaning the most impact to rank 15 meaning the least impact. Findings show that the greatest impact on the perception of spirituality is related to somatic indicators.

During vision process, the information produced by rod and cone photoreceptors is compressed in retina and then is transmitted by three separated pathways of ganglion cells, Magno, Parvo and Konio, to the upper level processing centers. There are electrophysiological and psychophysical evidences that these three pathways show characteristic patterns of malfunction in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Although fMRI can provide accurate localization of the neural activities in these pathways, there is no fMRI study on malfunctions of these pathwyas in MS yet. So by employing the differences in structure and function of these cells, we generated three different visual stimuli with different spatial and temporal frequencies to stimulate each pathway separately. These stimuli were shown to the subject inside MRI scanner by a calibrated projector located outside of scanner room. The fMRI data were acquired from two groups of normal and MS subjects (each including 5 subjects) by using a standard protocol. Finally, the activation results in visual lobe and LGN were analyzed in within-group and between-group levels. Results showed patterns of malfunctions in visual cortex and LGN in MS group. Also, among Magno, Parvo, and Konio cellular pathways in LGN, just the activation of Magno cellular pathway showed significant malfunction in MS group.