Positive Technology Journal

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.

The Neurobiological Dimension of Meditation - Results from Neuroimaging Studies.

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