The lights are flashing, the music is pounding through your body, and you are completely immersed in the moment. But what is happening inside your brain? This year, neurologist Sandra van der Salm of UMC Utrecht aims to find out at Lowlands. Together with her team, she will record the brain waves of festivalgoers live to better understand what strobe lighting does to a healthy brain. Ultimately, this knowledge could contribute to better care for people with epilepsy and safer festival policies.
Festivals are full of sensory stimuli: lights, music, and crowds of people. Festivalgoers seem to actively seek out these experiences. At the same time, physicians are seeing more and more people with symptoms caused by sensory overload. “Every day, people arrive at the emergency room after experiencing an epileptic seizure triggered by sensory overstimulation,” says neurologist Sandra van der Salm. “As a result, we mainly understand how brains respond abnormally to overstimulation, but we know very little about how healthy brains respond.”
That is why Sandra and her team at UMC Utrecht are studying how the healthy brains of festivalgoers react to strobe lighting. The findings may ultimately help clinicians interpret brain measurements in epilepsy patients more accurately.
At X-Ray Your Festival Brain at Lowlands, visitors can have their own brain waves measured. Using an EEG, the team records how a person’s brain responds to different frequencies of strobe lighting.
Participants first complete a short questionnaire and then enter an environment designed to feel like a festival experience. Relaxing in a lounge chair and listening to their favorite music, they are exposed to light stimuli: first under dim lighting and then under full strobe lighting. Meanwhile, researchers measure how the brain responds to these stimuli. Afterwards, participants discover which “brain type” best matches their results.
The Lowlands study is part of the REPEAT study, a larger national research project coordinated by UMC Utrecht. The study examines the effects of sleep deprivation and photic stimulation on the brain in people with possible epilepsy. “A festival like Lowlands offers a unique opportunity,” says Sandra. “Nowhere else will you find so many healthy volunteers who are simultaneously sleep-deprived, using recreational substances, and are partying. Scientifically, we know almost nothing about the combined effects of those factors.”
The data collected at the festival could ultimately contribute to better care for people with epilepsy. “Because we do not yet fully understand how healthy brains respond to sleep deprivation and substance use, it is difficult to accurately interpret abnormal measurements in hospital patients,” says Sandra. “Does a particular measurement indicate epilepsy, or is there another explanation?”
Sandra also hopes the findings will provide practical guidance for safer festival policies.
“We want to identify which flash frequencies are safe while still creating an enjoyable festival atmosphere,” she says. “That way, we hope everyone can enjoy festivals without worry.”
X-Ray Your Festival Brain is part of Lowlands Science, the festival’s science program, which brings science and society into direct contact with one another. Lowlands takes place from August 21–23, 2026.
