Positive Technology Journal

In this interesting paper Burke and coll. describe how the massive proliferation of mobile devices and sensors may give raise to interactive, participatory sensor networks that enable users to gather, analyze and share local knowledge.

The authors also explain how the vision of Participatory Sensing can inspire new applications in different domains, such as healthcare or urban planning.

A virtual reality-based system integrated with fmri to study neural mechanisms of action observation-execution: A proof of concept study.

Restor Neurol Neurosci. 2009;27(3):209-23

Authors: Adamovich SV, August K, Merians A, Tunik E

Purpose: Emerging evidence shows that interactive virtual environments (VEs) may be a promising tool for studying sensorimotor processes and for rehabilitation. However, the potential of VEs to recruit action observation-execution neural networks is largely unknown. For the first time, a functional MRI-compatible virtual reality system (VR) has been developed to provide a window into studying brain-behavior interactions. This system is capable of measuring the complex span of hand-finger movements and simultaneously streaming this kinematic data to control the motion of representations of human hands in virtual reality. Methods: In a blocked fMRI design, thirteen healthy subjects observed, with the intent to imitate (OTI), finger sequences performed by the virtual hand avatar seen in 1st person perspective and animated by pre-recorded kinematic data. Following this, subjects imitated the observed sequence while viewing the virtual hand avatar animated by their own movement in real-time. These blocks were interleaved with rest periods during which subjects viewed static virtual hand avatars and control trials in which the avatars were replaced with moving non-anthropomorphic objects. Results: We show three main findings. First, both observation with intent to imitate and imitation with real-time virtual avatar feedback, were associated with activation in a distributed frontoparietal network typically recruited for observation and execution of real-world actions. Second, we noted a time-variant increase in activation in the left insular cortex for observation with intent to imitate actions performed by the virtual avatar. Third, imitation with virtual avatar feedback (relative to the control condition) was associated with a localized recruitment of the angular gyrus, precuneus, and extrastriate body area, regions which are (along with insular cortex) associated with the sense of agency. Conclusions: Our data suggest that the virtual hand avatars may have served as disembodied training tools in the observation condition and as embodied "extensions" of the subject's own body (pseudo-tools) in the imitation. These data advance our understanding of the brain-behavior interactions when performing actions in VE and have implications in the development of observation- and imitation-based VR rehabilitation paradigms.

Positive impact of cyclic meditation on subsequent sleep.

Med Sci Monit. 2009 Jul;15(7):CR375-381

Authors: Patra S, Telles S

Background: Cyclic meditation (CM) is a technique that combines yoga postures interspersed with supine rest. This combination is based on ancient texts and is considered easier for beginners to practice. Material/Methods: Whole-night polysomnographic measures and the self-rating of sleep were studied on the night following a day in which 30 male participants practiced CM twice (ca. 23 minutes each time). This was compared with another night when they had had two sessions of supine rest (SR) of equal duration on the preceding day. The sessions were one day apart and the order of the sessions was randomized. Recordings were from the F4, C4, and O2 electrode sites referenced to linked earlobes and bipolar electroculography and electromyography sites. Results: In the night following CM, the percentage of slow-wave sleep (SWS) was significantly higher than in the night following SR, whereas the percentage of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and the number of awakenings per hour were less. Following CM the self-rating of sleep based on visual analog scales showed an increase in the feeling that the sleep was refreshing, an increase in feeling "good" in the morning, an overall increase in sleep duration, and decreases in the degree to which sleep was influenced by being in a laboratory as well as any associated discomfort. Conclusions: Practicing cyclic meditation twice a day appeared to improve the objective and subjective quality of sleep on the following night.

In this very interesting keynote given at the recent Game Developers Conference, Jane McGonigal discusses the role of Positive Psychology in gaming. Another significant sign of how the world of ICT is embracing the perspective of Positive Technology...

Learning to Make Your Own Reality - IGDA Education Keynote 2009

From the Reactable website:

The Reactable is a revolutionary new electronic musical instrument designed to create and perform the music of today and tomorrow. It combines state of the art technologies with a simple and intuitive design, which enables musicians to experiment with sound, change its structure, control its parameters and be creative in a direct and refreshing way, unlike anything you have ever known before.

The Reactable uses a so called tangible interface, where the musician controls the system by manipulating tangible objects. The instrument is based on a translucent and luminous round table, and by putting these pucks on the Reactable surface, by turning them and connecting them to each other, performers can combine different elements like synthesizers, effects, sample loops or control elements in order to create a unique and flexible composition.

As soon as any puck is placed on the surface, it is illuminated and starts to interact with the other neighboring pucks, according to their positions and proximity. These interactions are visible on the table surface which acts as a screen, giving instant feedback about what is currently going on in the Reactable turning music into something visible and tangible.

Additionally, performers can also change the behavior of the objects by touching and interacting with the table surface, and because the Reactable technology is “multi-touch”, there is not limit to the number of fingers that can be used simultaneously. As a matter of fact, the Reactable was specially designed so that it could also be used by several performers at the same time, thus opening up a whole new universe of pedagogical, entertaining and creative possibilities with its collaborative and multi-user capabilities

 

This picture appears to show green and blue spirals, but in fact the apparent green and blue are exactly the same colour.

More about this here and here.

Neurofeedback-based motor imagery training for brain-computer interface (BCI).

J Neurosci Methods. 2009 Apr 30;179(1):150-6

Authors: Hwang HJ, Kwon K, Im CH

In the present study, we propose a neurofeedback-based motor imagery training system for EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI). The proposed system can help individuals get the feel of motor imagery by presenting them with real-time brain activation maps on their cortex. Ten healthy participants took part in our experiment, half of whom were trained by the suggested training system and the others did not use any training. All participants in the trained group succeeded in performing motor imagery after a series of trials to activate their motor cortex without any physical movements of their limbs. To confirm the effect of the suggested system, we recorded EEG signals for the trained group around sensorimotor cortex while they were imagining either left or right hand movements according to our experimental design, before and after the motor imagery training. For the control group, we also recorded EEG signals twice without any training sessions. The participants' intentions were then classified using a time-frequency analysis technique, and the results of the trained group showed significant differences in the sensorimotor rhythms between the signals recorded before and after training. Classification accuracy was also enhanced considerably in all participants after motor imagery training, compared to the accuracy before training. On the other hand, the analysis results for the control EEG data set did not show consistent increment in both the number of meaningful time-frequency combinations and the classification accuracy, demonstrating that the suggested system can be used as a tool for training motor imagery tasks in BCI applications. Further, we expect that the motor imagery training system will be useful not only for BCI applications, but for functional brain mapping studies that utilize motor imagery tasks as well.

Effect of Motor Imagery in the Rehabilitation of Burn Patients.

J Burn Care Res. 2009 Jun 5;

Authors: Guillot A, Lebon F, Vernay M, Girbon JP, Doyon J, Collet C

Although there is ample evidence that motor imagery (MI) improves motor performance after CNS injury, it is still unknown whether MI may enhance motor recovery after peripheral injury and most especially in the rehabilitation of burn patients. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a 2-week MI training program combined with conventional rehabilitation on the recovery of motor functions in handed burn patients. Fourteen patients admitted to the Medical Burn Center were requested to take part in the study and were randomly assigned to the imagery or the control group. Behavioral data related to the ability to perform each successive step of three manual motor sequences were collected at five intervals during the medical procedure. The results provided evidence that MI may facilitate motor recovery, and the belief in the effectiveness of MI was strong in all patients. MI may substantially contribute to improve the efficacy of conventional rehabilitation programs. Hence, this technique should be considered as a reliable alternative method to help burn patients to recover motor functions.

I am probably not the first to post about Microsoft's NATAL project, but who cares?

The fact is, I literally lack the words to express how deep I am impressed by this new gaming technology.

I have no idea if/when this product will come to the shops, but it's hard to believe that Microsoft will have any more competitors in the game industry after its launch.

Announced during Microsoft's annual E3 press conference, Project Natal is the point of arrival of several years of r&d by an Israeli start-up called 3DV Systems, which Microsoft recently acquired. Microsoft Xbox Senior Vice President Don Mattrick did state that Project Natal would be compatible with every Xbox 360, but the cost is top secret..

The technology (see video below), allows users contolling games, movies, and anything else on their Xbox system with their body alone, and without touching any hardware.

If it's a real product and not just a marketing invention, it could also have important applications in the field of cybertherapy, in particular for neuro-motor rehabilitation. The advantages of this technology are quite clear: there is nothing to wear for the patient and it's possibile to use motivational gaming scenarios of all kinds.

How does visual thinking work in the mind of a person with autism? A personal account.

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 May 27;364(1522):1437-42

Authors: Grandin T

My mind is similar to an Internet search engine that searches for photographs. I use language to narrate the photo-realistic pictures that pop up in my imagination. When I design equipment for the cattle industry, I can test run it in my imagination similar to a virtual reality computer program. All my thinking is associative and not linear. To form concepts, I sort pictures into categories similar to computer files. To form the concept of orange, I see many different orange objects, such as oranges, pumpkins, orange juice and marmalade. I have observed that there are three different specialized autistic/Asperger cognitive types. They are: (i) visual thinkers such as I who are often poor at algebra, (ii) pattern thinkers such as Daniel Tammet who excel in math and music but may have problems with reading or writing composition, and (iii) verbal specialists who are good at talking and writing but they lack visual skills.

Equivalence of Real-World and Virtual-Reality Route Learning: A Pilot Study.

Cyberpsychol Behav. 2009 Jun 10;

Authors: Lloyd J, Persaud NV, Powell TE

Abstract There is good evidence for effective transfer of learning from virtual to real-world environments, and this holds true even for complex spatial tasks such as route learning. However, there is little research into the simple equivalence of an individual's performance across real and virtual environments, an important topic which could support the use of virtual reality as an assessment and research tool. This pilot study compared route-learning performance in a desktop virtual town with performance around a real-world route. Participants were "driven" around a route through a virtual town and around a different (but equally complex) route through a real-world suburb, then asked to direct the driver back around each of the routes from memory. They completed strategy checklists after learning each route. Results indicated good equivalence between the real and virtual environments, with comparable error rates and no differences in strategy preferences. This demonstrates that simple desktop virtual environments may be a useful tool for assessment of and research into route learning.

Last Monday I attended Frontiers of Interaction V, where I gave a talk on Participative Ecology. The conference took place in Rome, at the wonderful Acquario Romano, Casa dell'Architettura.

I was really excited to be there, because I consider Frontiers the most interesting interaction design event in Italy.

Frontiers is organized and produced by Leandro Agrò and Matteo Penzo, who are also the founders of the Idearium community, the largest e-community on Interaction Design in Italy.

The format of the conference is very informal and fresh. You can meet people of all sorts, from academic researchers to superstars of interaction design, from anthropologists to futurists and young entrepreneurs, a mix of creativity and talent.

At the end of the meeting I felt physically exhausted but full of positive energy.

Here are some videos

(and, last but not least: Frontiers is completely free of charge, only registration is required. This is great since this makes the event accessible to young students)

W Frontiers!

Neurofeedback-based motor imagery training for brain-computer interface (BCI).

J Neurosci Methods. 2009 Apr 30;179(1):150-156

Authors: Hwang HJ, Kwon K, Im CH

In the present study, we propose a neurofeedback-based motor imagery training system for EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI). The proposed system can help individuals get the feel of motor imagery by presenting them with real-time brain activation maps on their cortex. Ten healthy participants took part in our experiment, half of whom were trained by the suggested training system and the others did not use any training. All participants in the trained group succeeded in performing motor imagery after a series of trials to activate their motor cortex without any physical movements of their limbs. To confirm the effect of the suggested system, we recorded EEG signals for the trained group around sensorimotor cortex while they were imagining either left or right hand movements according to our experimental design, before and after the motor imagery training. For the control group, we also recorded EEG signals twice without any training sessions. The participants' intentions were then classified using a time-frequency analysis technique, and the results of the trained group showed significant differences in the sensorimotor rhythms between the signals recorded before and after training. Classification accuracy was also enhanced considerably in all participants after motor imagery training, compared to the accuracy before training. On the other hand, the analysis results for the control EEG data set did not show consistent increment in both the number of meaningful time-frequency combinations and the classification accuracy, demonstrating that the suggested system can be used as a tool for training motor imagery tasks in BCI applications. Further, we expect that the motor imagery training system will be useful not only for BCI applications, but for functional brain mapping studies that utilize motor imagery tasks as well.

Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

Watch the demo video below

General Electric has a great mini-site up showcasing their newest energy services and smarter power management tools.

But the most intriguing part of the site is the augmented reality applications that you can play with using your computer’s webcam.

What you do is you print out a piece of paper that the webcam “sees” and GE’s augmented reality program builds a virtual hologram.

Check out the demo video and then try the AR apps here

This is a demo that demonstrates the potential of rendering 3D graphics in the browser, using O3D, an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser. The app shown in the video is coded in javascript and html and runs in a web browser.

InfoAesthetics has collected some interesting examples of what I call Participatory Ecology - the use of social media to foster collective awareness of environmental challenges and promote sustainable development.

- The Energy Detective project merged the actual energy output of an everyday family with a Google Visualization API Timeline visualization, which itself is based on a Twitter-based feed from the smart metering device. Remarkable events or peaks are regularly annotated, and one can easily make out when typical household activities have taken place.

- The flashy Radisson Hotel Building Dashboard seems to offer near real-time statistics about water, electricity and natural gas usage, and the weather. As a hotel, it should really try to consider offering some real data behind those ambivalent "Please use our towels multiple times, for the sake of nature" signs.

Other recent websites focus on using group pressure and social encouragement by publishing one's efforts in more sustainable living within the framework of an online social network.

- Make Me Sustainable allows users to calculate and reduce their carbon footprint, which is then represented as a simple history bar graph or translated in the metaphor of "trees saved" or "cars taken off the road".

- Carbon Rally focuses on reducing one's carbon footprint impact by proposing group challenges, and aggregating the efforts of all its members on a large CO2 Impact Map.

- Finally, the Carbon Monitoring for Action portal is a massive database containing information on the carbon emissions of over 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide, visualized on a world map. By providing complete information for both "clean" and "dirty" power producers, CARMA hopes to influence the opinions and decisions from consumers to policy makers.

“Quickly emerging from the fast-paced growth of mobile communications and wireless technologies, pervasive games provide a worldwide network of potential play spaces. Now games can be designed to be played in public spaces like streets, conferences, museums and other non-traditional game venues – and game designers need to understand the world as a medium—both its challenges and its advantages.

This book shows how to change the face of play—who plays, when and where they play and what that play means to all involved. The authors explore aspects of pervasive games that concern game designers: what makes these games compelling, what makes them possible today, how they are made and by whom. For theorists, it provides a solidtheoretical, philosophical and aesthetic grounding of their designs. Pervasive Games covers everything from theory and design to history and marketing. Designers will find 13 detailed game descriptions, a wealth of design theory, examples from dozens of games and a thorough discussion of past inspirations—directly from the game designers themselves.“

PRESENCCIA and SKILLS are two integrated projects that both aim to advance Virtual Reality technology. These projects are highly interdisciplinary encompassing, among others, computer science, robotics, engineering, interaction design, cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy. All these fields, however diverse their interests, come together in the goal of integrating human interaction in mixed and virtual reality environments in order to enhance the user’s experience and enabling him to act and interact in a natural and familiar way by means of enactive paradigms.

The most interesting, challenging and useful digital environments are social, focussing on supporting (group) interaction between real people and other remote people or real people and virtual people. The aim is to understand, track and give appropriate feedback in verbal, non-verbal and implicit interactions while also making digital content more believable and intelligent.

Likewise, a number of methods need to be developed allowing users of virtual environments to not only perform actions effectively in a variety of different scenarios but also be able to choose from a repertoire of suitable actions. This requires adequate digital representations of human skills and also techniques to capture, interpret and deliver them by means of multimodal interfaces, robotics and virtual environments within enactive interaction paradigms.

At the low-level end of the spectrum we also aim to understand the neural basis of presence and its response. Its enhancement and its application is the fundamental object of study from many different points of view, and including visual, haptic and auditory modalities.

To participate to the Workshop, please register on line:
http://www.percro.org/registrationXVR2009/

Keynote Speakers

Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Psychology Department , Università di Roma "La Sapienza” and IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Roma (http://w3.uniroma1.it/aglioti/) ù

Flesh made Soul: Bodies in the Brain.

Talking about the body implies talking about the very “special object” that allows a deep interconnection between the ability to have self-consciousness and the ability to experience a world of objects. My talk will be based on the studies in healthy and brain damaged subjects we performed in the past fifteen years on the neural representation of the body. I will put forward the idea that, although trivially made of flesh, blood and bones, the body can be considered the “psychic object” par excellence, which mediates and implements a variety of complex functions, ranging from the notion of self to social interactions and negotiations.

Jan Peters, Dept. Empirical Inference, Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany (http://www-clmc.usc.edu/~jrpeters/)

Towards Motor Skill Learning in Robotics.

Autonomous robots that can assist humans in situations of daily life have been a long standing vision of robotics, artificial intelligence,
and cognitive sciences. A first step towards this goal is to create robots that can learn tasks triggered by environmental context or higher level instruction. However, learning techniques have yet to live up to  this promise as only few methods manage to scale to high-dimensional manipulator or humanoid robots. In this talk, we investigate a general framework suitable for learning motor skills in robotics which is based on the principles behind many analytical robotics approaches. We propose new, task-appropriate architectures, such as the Natural Actor-Critic and the PoWER algorithm.
and cognitive sciences. A first step towards this goal is to create robots that can learn tasks triggered by environmental context or higher level instruction. However, learning techniques have yet to live up to  this promise as only few methods manage to scale to high-dimensional manipulator or humanoid robots. In this talk, we investigate a general framework suitable for learning motor skills in robotics which is based on the principles behind many analytical robotics approaches. We propose new, task-appropriate architectures, such as the Natural Actor-Critic and the PoWER algorithm.

Testing the effects of educational strategies on comprehension of a genomic concept using virtual reality technology.

Patient Educ Couns. 2009 Apr 29;

Authors: Kaphingst KA, Persky S, McCall C, Lachance C, Loewenstein J, Beall AC, Blascovich J

OBJECTIVE: Applying genetic susceptibility information to improve health will likely require educating patients about abstract concepts, for which there is little existing research. This experimental study examined the effect of learning mode on comprehension of a genomic concept. METHODS: 156 individuals aged 18-40 without specialized knowledge were randomly assigned to either a virtual reality active learning or didactic learning condition. The outcome was comprehension (recall, transfer, mental models). RESULTS: Change in recall was greater for didactic learning than for active learning (p<0.001). Mean transfer and change in mental models were also higher for didactic learning (p<0.0001 and p<0.05, respectively). Believability was higher for didactic learning (p<0.05), while ratings for motivation (p<0.05), interest (p<0.0001), and enjoyment (p<0.0001) were higher for active learning, but these variables did not mediate the association between learning mode and comprehension. CONCLUSION: These results show that learning mode affects comprehension, but additional research is needed regarding how and in what contexts different approaches are best for educating patients about abstract concepts. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Didactic, interpersonal health education approaches may be more effective than interactive games in educating patients about abstract, unfamiliar concepts. These findings indicate the importance of traditional health education approaches in emerging areas like genomics.