Positive Technology Journal

Assessment of emotional reactivity produced by exposure to virtual environments in patients with eating disorders.

Cyberpsychol Behav. 2006 Oct;9(5):507-13

Authors: Gutiérrez-Maldonado J, Ferrer-García M, Caqueo-Urízar A, Letosa-Porta A

The aim of this study was to assess the usefulness of virtual environments representing situations that are emotionally significant to subjects with eating disorders (ED). These environments may be applied with both evaluative and therapeutic aims and in simulation procedures to carry out a range of experimental studies. This paper is part of a wider research project analyzing the influence of the situation to which subjects are exposed on their performance on body image estimation tasks. Thirty female patients with eating disorders were exposed to six virtual environments: a living-room (neutral situation), a kitchen with highcalorie food, a kitchen with low-calorie food, a restaurant with high-calorie food, a restaurant with low-calorie food, and a swimming-pool. After exposure to each environment the STAI-S (a measurement of state anxiety) and the CDB (a measurement of depression) were administered to all subjects. The results show that virtual reality instruments are particularly useful for simulating everyday situations that may provoke emotional reactions such as anxiety and depression, in patients with ED. Virtual environments in which subjects are obliged to ingest high-calorie food provoke the highest levels of state anxiety and depression.

Head-Mounted Displays for Clinical Virtual Reality Applications: Pitfalls in Understanding User Behavior while Using Technology.

Cyberpsychol Behav. 2006 Oct;9(5):591-602

Authors: Simone LK, Schultheis MT, Rebimbas J, Millis SR

The use of virtual environments with head-mounted displays (HMDs) offers unique assets to the evaluation and therapy of clinical populations. However, research examining the effects of this technology on clinical populations is sparse. Understanding how wearers interact with the HMD is vital. Discomfort leads to altered use of the HMD that could confound performance measures; the very measures which might be used as tools for clinical decision making. The current study is a post-hoc analysis of the relationship between HMD use and HMD comfort. The analysis was conducted to examine contributing factors for a high incidence of simulator sickness observed in an HMD-based driving simulator. Pearson correlation analysis was used to evaluate objective and subjective measures of HMD performance and self-reported user comfort ratings. The results indicated weak correlations between these variables, indicating the complexity of quantifying user discomfort and HMD performance. Comparison of two case studies detailing user behavior in the virtual environment demonstrates that selected variables may not capture how individuals use the HMD. The validity and usefulness of the HMD-based virtual environments must be understood to fully reap the benefits of virtual reality (VR) in rehabilitation medicine.

Via IEET 

A one-day seminar to be held on Thursday 12 October 2006 at Cambridge University.

The Neuroscience Horizon conference will introduce a range of exciting research from the frontiers of this field. World leading academic and industry scientists and opinion leaders will detail the latest areas of research and the future trends. In common with other conferences in the Horizon series, the seminar will be followed by dinner in the elegant surroundings of New Hall. This event follows on from the success of the ‘Personalised Medicine’ Horizon Conference and promises to be indispensable for companies in this field.

For further information please contact Jo Ryan on +44 (0)1223 765404 or horizon@rsd.cam.ac.uk

From Pasta and Vinegar

VibeFones: Socially Aware Mobile Phones by Anmol Madan and Alex Pentland will be presented next friday in Montreux, Switzerland for the International Seminar of Wearable Computing.

In this paper, we describe mobile social software that uses tone of voice, location and proximity information to create a sophisticated understanding of people's social lives, by automatically mining their face-to-face and phone interactions. We describe several applications of our system - automatic characterization of social and workplace interactions, a courtesy reminder for phone conversations, and a personal trainer for dating encounters.