Positive Technology Journal

Recent trends in robot-assisted therapy environments to improve real-life functional performance of affected limbs.

J Neuroengineering Rehabil. 2006 Dec 18;3(1):29

Authors: Johnson MJ

ABSTRACT: Upper and lower limb robotic tools for neuro-rehabilitation are effective in reducing motor impairment but they are limited in their ability to improve real world function. There is a need to improve functional outcomes after robot-assisted therapy. Improvements in the effectiveness of these environments may be achieved by incorporating into their design and control strategies important elements key to inducing motor learning and cerebral plasticity such as mass-practice, feedback, task-engagement, and complex problem solving. This special issue presents nine articles. The novel strategies covered in this issue encourage more natural movements through the use of virtual reality and real objects and faster motor learning through the use of error feedback to guide acquisition of natural movements that are salient to real activities. In addition, several articles describe novel systems and techniques that use of custom and commercial games combined with new low-cost robot systems and a humanoid robot to embody the supervisory presence of the therapy as possible solutions to exercise compliance in under-supervised environments such as the home.

 You -- Yes, You -- Are TIME's Person of the Year by Lev Grossman

From Networked Performance (via Pasta and Vinegar)

MoPres: Sense and contribute to the ghosty presences around you by Jane Oh, Alex Bisceglie:

MoPres brings out the residual presence of the people who occupied your current location. It is a geotagging project with the humanized `context' of the locations. The raw data is from bio-metric sensers rather than the conscious, forceful, and mostly inaccurate logging which will provide a more creative and sophisticated flexibility of interpretation on the experiences of people

User Scenario: People wear the vest with embedded sensor package [heart rate and body temperature sensors], and the data is logged through the cell phone with geo tagging [gps and/or cell-tower id]. Once the mobile application reads the pattern of the data in relation to locations, it triggers the output devices embedded in the vest [heater and the pulse motor] with relevant residual patterns so that people can experience others' past experiences at the given spot.

key players in the MoSoSo arena:

Dodgeball, Enpresence, Jambo Networks, Loopt, Mologogo, My MoSoSo, Pinppl, PlaceSite, Plazes, Saki Mobile, Nokia Sensor, Microsoft SLAM, Vixo, Zingku

Elkhonon Goldberg, Alvaro Fernandez and Caroline Latham (Sharpbrains) have written Brain Fitness for Sharp Brains: Your New New Year Resolution, an introductory guide to the concept, science, and practice of brain fitness

A free copy of the report can be ordered here 

Via Smart Mobs 

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has published a study entitled "Long-term Effects of Cognitive Training on Everyday Functional Outcomes in Older Adults" that shows the positive effects of cognitive training on daily function and cognitive abilities.

Authors: Sherry L. Willis, PhD; Sharon L. Tennstedt, PhD; Michael Marsiske, PhD; Karlene Ball, PhD; Jeffrey Elias, PhD; Kathy Mann Koepke, PhD; John N. Morris, PhD; George W. Rebok, PhD; Frederick W. Unverzagt, PhD; Anne M. Stoddard, ScD; Elizabeth Wright, PhD.

JAMA. 2006;296:2805-2814.

Context. Cognitive training has been shown to improve cognitive abilities in older adults but the effects of cognitive training on everyday function have not been demonstrated.  Objective. To determine the effects of cognitive training on daily function and durability of training on cognitive abilities. Design, Setting, and Participants. Five-year follow-up of a randomized controlled single-blind trial with 4 treatment groups. A volunteer sample of 2832 persons (mean age, 73.6 years; 26% black), living independently in 6 US cities, was recruited from senior housing, community centers, and hospitals and clinics. The study was conducted between April 1998 and December 2004. Five-year follow-up was completed in 67% of the sample. Interventions. Ten-session training for memory (verbal episodic memory), reasoning (inductive reasoning), or speed of processing (visual search and identification); 4-session booster training at 11 and 35 months after training in a random sample of those who completed training. Main Outcome Measures. Self-reported and performance-based measures of daily function and cognitive abilities. Results. The reasoning group reported significantly less difficulty in the instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) than the control group (effect size, 0.29; 99% confidence interval [CI], 0.03-0.55). Neither speed of processing training (effect size, 0.26; 99% CI, –0.002 to 0.51) nor memory training (effect size, 0.20; 99% CI, –0.06 to 0.46) had a significant effect on IADL. The booster training for the speed of processing group, but not for the other 2 groups, showed a significant effect on the performance-based functional measure of everyday speed of processing (effect size, 0.30; 99% CI, 0.08-0.52). No booster effects were seen for any of the groups for everyday problem-solving or self-reported difficulty in IADL. Each intervention maintained effects on its specific targeted cognitive ability through 5 years (memory: effect size, 0.23 [99% CI, 0.11-0.35]; reasoning: effect size, 0.26 [99% CI, 0.17-0.35]; speed of processing: effect size, 0.76 [99% CI, 0.62-0.90]). Booster training produced additional improvement with the reasoning intervention for reasoning performance (effect size, 0.28; 99% CI, 0.12-0.43) and the speed of processing intervention for speed of processing performance (effect size, 0.85; 99% CI, 0.61-1.09). Conclusions. Reasoning training resulted in less functional decline in self-reported IADL. Compared with the control group, cognitive training resulted in improved cognitive abilities specific to the abilities trained that continued 5 years after the initiation of the intervention.

Link to full-text article

Link to Washington Post report about the study

Integration of motor imagery and physical practice in group treatment applied to subjects with Parkinson's disease.

Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2007 Mar;21(1):68-75

Authors: Tamir R, Dickstein R, Huberman M

BACKGROUND: and PURPOSE: The application of motor imagery practice in the treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD) is a novel treatment approach for improving motor function. The purpose of this study was to compare group treatment using a combination of physical and motor imagery practice with group treatment using only physical practice in subjects with PD. METHODS: . Of 23 patients with idiopathic PD, 12 received combined therapy, whereas 11 received physical therapy alone. Exercises for both groups were applied during 1-h sessions held twice a week for 12 weeks. Comparable motor tasks provided to both groups included callisthenic exercises, functional tasks, and relaxation exercises. However, the experimental group was treated with both imagery and real practice, whereas the control group received only physical exercises. Outcome measures included the time required to complete sequences of movements, the performance of balance tasks, impairment and functional scores on the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), and specific cognitive abilities (Stroop and clock drawing tests). RESULTS: . Following the intervention, the combined treatment group exhibited significantly faster performance of movement sequences than the control group. In addition, the experimental subjects demonstrated higher gains in the mental and motor subsets of the UPDRS and in the cognitive tests. Both groups improved on the activities of daily living scale. CONCLUSIONS: . The combination of motor imagery and real practice may be effective in the treatment of PD, especially for reducing bradykinesia. The implementation of this treatment regimen allows for the extension of practice time with negligible risk and low cost.

Studies of advanced stages of meditation in the tibetan buddhist and vedic traditions. I: a comparison of general changes.

Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2006 Dec;3(4):513-21

Authors: Hankey A

This article is the first of two comparing findings of studies of advanced practitioners of Tibetan Buddhist meditation in remote regions of the Himalayas, with established results on long-term practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation programs. Many parallel levels of improvement were found, in sensory acuity, perceptual style and cognitive function, indicating stabilization of aspects of attentional awareness. Together with observed increases in EEG coherence and aspects of brain function, such changes are consistent with growth towards a state of total brain functioning, i.e. development of full mental potential. They are usually accompanied by improved health parameters. How they may be seen to be consistent with growth of enlightenment will be the subject of a second article.

Technology does not naturally sense nonverbal cues such as facial expressions and tone of voice, and does not easily acquire common sense knowledge about people. These "mindreading" functions also do not come naturally for some people, such as those diagnosed with autism. ESP is an affective wearable system that explores ways to augment and enhance the wearer's emotional-social intelligence. ESP's computational model of mind-reading infers in real time affective-cognitive mental states from nonverbal cues such as head and facial displays of people, and communicates these inferences to the wearer via visual, sound, and tactile feedback.

Our work leverages the advances in affect sensing and perception to (1) develop technologies that are sensitive to people's affective-cognitive states; (2) advance autism research and (3) create new technologies that enhance the social-emotional intelligence of people diagnosed with autism, as well as those who are not.

The project addresses open research challenges pertaining to whether machines can augment social interactions in a way that improves human to human communication. A longer term aim is to use the prosthesis as an assistive and therapeutic device for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Virtual reality training for stroke rehabilitation.

NeuroRehabilitation. 2006;21(3):245-53

Authors: Lam YS, Man DW, Tam SF, Weiss PL

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a 2-D virtual reality (2DVR) programme in the training of people with stroke on how to access and use the station facilities of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR). Method: A flat-screen 2DVR based training programme and a corresponding, typical psycho-educational programme with video modelling were developed for comparison through a research design that involved a randomised control group pre-test and post-test. Results: Twenty and sixteen subjects respectively received 10 training sessions using the 2DVR strategy and a video-based psycho-educational programme. An additional 22 subjects formed the control group. They were assessed by using a behavioural checklist of MTR skills and a newly validated MTR self-efficacy scale. The subjects of both training groups showed a significant improvement in their knowledge, skills and self-efficacy in using the MTR (p<0.01), whereas, the MTR skills and self-efficacy of the control group remained stable over a four-week interval. Conclusion: Though both training programmes were effective in training the patients with stroke, they demonstrated differential improvements in MTR skills and related self-efficacy. Additional studies are recommended to identify the most effective training procedures for maintaining these skills and the best transfer ratio in the training of VR-based community living skills of people with stroke.

Via LADS 

According to technology predictions by analysts Gartner, the blogging phenomenon is set to peak in 2007. Gartner said that during the middle of next year the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million. The firm has said that 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs.

EMG and EOG artifacts in brain computer interface systems: A survey.

Clin Neurophysiol. 2006 Dec 12;

Authors: Fatourechi M, Bashashati A, Ward RK, Birch GE

It is widely accepted in the brain computer interface (BCI) research community that neurological phenomena are the only source of control in any BCI system. Artifacts are undesirable signals that can interfere with neurological phenomena. They may change the characteristics of neurological phenomena or even be mistakenly used as the source of control in BCI systems. Electrooculography (EOG) and electromyography (EMG) artifacts are considered among the most important sources of physiological artifacts in BCI systems. Currently, however, there is no comprehensive review of EMG and EOG artifacts in BCI literature. This paper reviews EOG and EMG artifacts associated with BCI systems and the current methods for dealing with them. More than 250 refereed journal and conference papers are reviewed and categorized based on the type of neurological phenomenon used and the methods employed for handling EOG and EMG artifacts. This study reveals weaknesses in BCI studies related to reporting the methods of handling EMG and EOG artifacts. Most BCI papers do not report whether or not they have considered the presence of EMG and EOG artifacts in the brain signals. Only a small percentage of BCI papers report automated methods for rejection or removal of artifacts in their systems. As the lack of dealing with artifacts may result in the deterioration of the performance of a particular BCI system during practical applications, it is necessary to develop automatic methods to handle artifacts or to design BCI systems whose performance is robust to the presence of artifacts.

Re-blogged from infoaesthetics 

Public mood ring is a physical installation inspired by the idea of a ring that translates the bearer's emotional condition into a changeable color hue...

link to the original post

Re-blogged from Networked Performance

Social Technologies Summit - register before end of december Special Advance Booking Rate *Available till 31 December* £25 (Normally £45) The Delegate Pass gives you access to all Futuresonic seminars and talks, the Social Technologies Summit, and entrance to Futuresonic Live events over the festival weekend. See here for details. A part of Futuresonic 2007

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES SUMMIT: The main conference strand of the Futuresonic festival, the Social Technologies Summit, is a major international conference exploring the creative and social potential of new technologies, bringing together leading figures to explore "a whole new way of doing things in the air".

The Social Technologies Summit promotes technology as social practice, and explores the social impact of technologies, in particular a new generation of network technologies that are increasingly embedded in the social sphere. It looks at how people collaborate to make or use technology, at the way in which certain technologies can create an extension of social space or support group interaction, and asks how we can make technology more social.

ENVIRONMENT 2.0

In 2007 a focus of the Social Technologies Summit is ENVIRONMENT 2.0, a new international initiative in which two worlds collide:

o The world is waking up to realities of climate change, long predicted but until now too easy to ignore.
o The world is in love with smart environments, mobile communication, pervasive media, wearable computing.

Can these two approaches to environment, each one iconic for our times, be reconciled?

The Social Technologies Summit will host a network meeting for ENVIRONMENT 2.0, and present the findings of a pioneering study of the carbon footprint of the Futuresonic festival, undertaken in collaboration with Creative Concern and Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

FREE-MEDIA

A linked focus is FREE-MEDIA. Free-media is about finding inspiration and resources in our built and natural environment that were previously dismissed as being without value or irrelevant. It doesn't cost much because it makes use of public domain Free and Open Source Software, and recycles freely available old equipment, waste materials and junk (FOSS). Free-media increases access to media technologies, especially to the people who need it most and can afford it the least, and lowers environmental impact of the media we produce and consume.

THE MAP DESIGNERS

The 2007 Summit will also play host to THE MAP DESIGNERS, an event drawing together map hackers, artists, cartographers, DIY technologists, architects, game programmers, bloggers and semantic web philosophers. Presented by the British Cartographic Society, the event will focus upon the interface between cartography and cutting edge design.

FUTUREVISUAL

As the main conference strand of the Futuresonic festival, the Social Technologies Summit will also host discussions of the festival's artistic themes. In 2007 this will involve a conference strand supporting Futurevisual, a city wide celebration of future image and sound. It will mark the 40th anniversary of the first multimedia events of the kind that we would understand today, which took place in the halcyon year of 1967, the year that also saw the first crossover between avant garde and popular music, and the introduction of the Moog synthesiser. The conference will feature seminal figures from the period, alongside contemporary artists who can connect with the energy and openness of 1967, and bring it bang up to date.

FUTURESONIC 2007

Futuresonic, the urban festival of electronic arts and music, is moving from July to May, back to the Spring date it occupied in 2004. Futuresonic 2007 will feature profile music events in Futuresonic Live, and art and technology events in Urban Play, a strand of the festival introduced in 2006 that has since been mirrored in other events in the UK and Europe.

DELEGATE PASS
Advance Booking Rate
£25 (Normally £45)
Reserve your discounted Delegate Pass before December 31st 2006 and
make payment by January 31st 2007
http://www.futuresonic.com/07/bookings.html

The Delegate Pass gives you access to all Futuresonic seminars and talks, the Social Technologies Summit, and entrance to Futuresonic Live events over the festival weekend. You must reserve your discounted Delegate Pass before December 31st 2006 and make payment by January 31st 2007. To reserve email tickets2007[at]futuresonic.com stating your name, address and contact details. You will be sent purchasing information from the festival box office by January 8th 2007.

Psychother Psychosom Med Psychol. 2006 Dec;56(12):488-492

Authors: Neumann NU, Frasch K

Meditation in general can be understood as a state of complete and unintentional silent and motionless concentration on an activity, an item or an idea. Subjectively, meditative experience is said to be fundamentally different from "normal" mental states and is characterized by terms like timelessness, boundlessness and lack of self-experience. In recent years, several fMRI- and PET-studies about meditation which are presented in this paper have been published. Due to different methods, especially different meditation types, the results are hardly comparable. Nevertheless, the data suggest the hypothesis of a "special" neural activity during meditative states being different from that during calm alertness. Main findings were increased activation in frontal, prefrontal and cingulate areas which may represent the mental state of altered self-experience. In the present studies, a considerable lack of scientific standards has to be stated making it of just casuistic value. Today's improved neurobiological examination methods - especially neuroimaging techniques - may contribute to enlighten the phenomenon of qualitatively different states of consciousness.

Kinesthetic but not visual imagery assists in normalizing the CNV in Parkinson's disease.

Clin Neurophysiol. 2006 Oct;117(10):2308-14

Authors: Lim VK, Polych MA, Holländer A, Byblow WD, Kirk IJ, Hamm JP

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated whether kinesthetic and/or visual imagery could alter the contingent negative variation (CNV) for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). METHODS: The CNV was recorded in six patients with PD and seven controls before and after a 10min block of imagery. There were two types of imagery employed: kinesthetic and visual, which were evaluated on separate days. RESULTS: The global field power (GFP) of the late CNV did not change after the visual imagery for either group, nor was there a significant difference between the groups. In contrast, kinesthetic imagery resulted in significant group differences pre-, versus post-imagery GFPs, which was not present prior to performing the kinesthetic imagery task. In patients with PD, the CNV amplitudes post-, relative to pre-kinesthetic imagery, increased over the dorsolateral prefrontal regions and decreased in the ipsilateral parietal regions. There were no such changes in controls. CONCLUSIONS: A 10-min session of kinesthetic imagery enhanced the GFP amplitude of the late CNV for patients but not for controls. SIGNIFICANCE: While the study needs to be replicated with a greater number of participants, the results suggest that kinesthetic imagery may be a promising tool for investigations into motor changes, and may potentially be employed therapeutically, in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Movement-specific enhancement of corticospinal excitability at subthreshold levels during motor imagery.

Exp Brain Res. 2006 Dec 8;

Authors: Li S

This study examined modulation of corticospinal excitability during both actual and imagined movements. Seven young healthy subjects performed actual (3-50% maximal voluntary contractions) and imagined index finger force production, and rest. Individual responses to focal transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in four fingers (index, middle, ring, and little) were recorded for all three tested conditions. The force increments at the threshold of activation were predicted from regression analysis, representing the TMS-induced response at the threshold activation of the corticospinal pathways. The measured increment in the index finger during motor imagery was larger than that at rest, but smaller than the predicted increment at the threshold of activation. On the other hand, the measured increment in the uninstructed (middle, ring, and little), slave fingers during motor imagery was larger than that at rest, but not different from the predicted increment at the threshold of activation. These contrasting results suggest that the degree of imagery-induced enhancement in corticospinal excitability was significantly less than what could be predicted for threshold levels from regression analysis, but only for the index finger, and not the adjacent slave fingers. It is concluded that corticospinal excitability for the explicitly instructed index finger is specifically enhanced at subthreshold levels during motor imagery.

Via ScienceDaily

University of Washington researchers have developed a brain-computer interface that allows humans to control the actions of robots through commands generated by analysis of EEG signals


Link 

Via IEET

Belgian government funds researcher to study neuroenhancement:

‘Neuroenhancement technology: an ethical analysis and study of the conditions for research and clinical trials.’

A project funded by the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (G.0048.07) 01/01/2007-31/12/2010.

Aim and objectives:

The emergence of new treatments which have the capacity to profoundly alter or influence mood and cognition is considered by some as one of the most promising as well as most challenging developments of the 21st century within the life sciences (Wolp, 2002). Aside of other socially relevant aspects of current neuroscience (e.g. ‘brain reading’ ) and its technological tools (e.g. fMRI, TMS, PET), it is in particular the discussions regarding ethical and social implications of neuroenhancement technology which are giving rise to the gradual development of ‘neuroethics’. Some of the most pertinent concerns which shape this emerging domain include questions as to how this technology relates to the general goals of medicine and what the conditions for research and clinical trials should be. While the need for a thorough exploraiton of the social and ethical implications of enhancement technology is generally well acknowledged, scarce attention has gone out to the question if and under what conditions such research should be supported.

The aims of the research proposal are the following:

(1) to provide an overview of the current developments and results within neuroenhancement technology;

(2) to obtain thorough insight in the academic, social and policy debates surrounding these developments;

(3) to conduct a conceptual analysis of the conflict between ‘normal’, ‘healthy’ mental functioning and ‘enhanced’ functioning, both in terms of strictly medical as well as medical ethical standards;

(4) to conduct a comparative, medical ethical study of the conditions for acceptance of this and other forms of enhancement technology; and

(5) to apply the results obtained from the analyses to the current context of neuroenhancement technology.