Positive Technology Journal

Via Pink Tentacle

NTT Learning Systems (NTTLS) and the Visual Interactive Sensitivity Research Institute (VIS),  have developed a eye-tracking system that analyzes the interest level of TV viewers and web surfers by monitoring their eye movement, pupil size and blinking. 

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Via Networked Performance

Deadline: Friday April 27, 2007 :: Contributions are welcomed for a new book addressing the construction and interpretation of virtual artefacts within virtual world museums and within physical museum spaces. Particular emphasis is placed on theories of spatiality and strategies of interpretation.

The editors seek papers that intervene in critical discourses surrounding virtual reality and virtual artefacts, to explore the rapidly changing temporal, spatial and theoretical boundaries of contemporary museum display practice. We are especially interested in spatiality as it is employed in the construction of virtual artefacts, as well as the roles these spaces enact as signifiers of historical narrative and sites of social interaction.

We are also interested in the relationship between real-world museums and virtual world museums, with a view to interrogating the construction of meaning within, across and between both. We welcome original scholarly contributions on the topic of new cultural practices and communities related to virtual reality in the context of museum display practice. Papers might address, but are in no way limited to, the following:

* Authenticity and artificiality
* Exploration and discovery
* Physical vs virtual
* Representation/interpretation of virtual reality artefacts - as 3D spaces on screen or in a physical gallery
* Museum visiting in virtual space
* Representation of physical museum spaces in virtual worlds and their relationship to cultural definitions of museum spaces.

Please send a proposal of 500-750 words and a contributor's bio by Friday
April 27, 2007. Authors will be notified by Thursday May 31, 2007. Final drafts of papers are due by Monday October 1, 2007.

Please send your proposal to:

Tara Chittenden
Room 201
Strategic Research Unit
113 Chancery Lane
London WC2A 1PL

Or via email: tara.chittenden[at]lawsociety.org.uk

Via Networked Performance

Mediamatic organizes a new workshop--Hybrid World Lab--in which the participants develop prototypes for hybrid world media applications. Where the virtual world and the physical world used to be quite separated realms of reality, they are quickly becoming two faces of the same hybrid coin. This workshop investigates the increasingly intimate fusion of digital and physical space from the perspective of a media maker.

The workshop is an intense process in which the participants explore the possibilities of the physical world as interface to online media: location based media, everyday objects as media interfaces, urban screens, and cultural application of RFID technology. Every morning lectures and lessons bring in new perspectives, project presentations and introductions to the hands-on workshop tools. Every afternoon the participants work on their own workshop projects. In 5 workshop days every participant will develop a prototype of a hybrid world media project, assisted by outstanding international trainers and lectures and technical assistants. The workshop closes with a public presentation in which the issues are discussed and the results are shown.

Topics: Some of the topics that will be investigated in this workshop are: Cultural application and impact of RFID technology, internet-of-things. Using RFID in combination with other kinds of sensors. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) and ambient intelligence: services and applications that use chips embedded in household appliances and in public space. Locative media tools, car navigation systems, GPS tools, location sensitive mobile phones. The web as interface to the physical world: geotagging and mashupswith Google Maps & Google Earth. Games in hybrid space.

Via Networked Performance

Solipsis is a pure peer-to-peer system for a massively shared virtual world. There are no central servers at all: it only relies on end-users' machines. Solipsis is a public virtual territory. The world is initially empty and only users will fill it by creating and running entities. No pre-existing cities, inhabitants nor scenario to respect...Solipsis is open-source, so everybody can enhance the protocols and the algorithms. Moreover, the system architecture clearly separates the different tasks, so that peer-to-peer hackers as well as multimedia geeks can find a good place to have fun here! Current versions of Solipsis give the opportunity to act as pionneers in a pre-cambrian world. You only have a 2D representation of the virtual world and some basic tools devoted to communications and interactions

Via Networked Performance 

LX 2.0: Contemporary Online Experiments: NeuroZappingFolks is a non-linear zapping through the Internet, a path leading to the inside of a web of relations, a web that can be explored from one tag to a site, to another tag, to another site... from word to image to word to image. NeuroZappingFolks is then the simulation of a brain lost in the web (lost between servers, but also lost in Internet's double identity: word and image).

Via Networked Performance

(Associated Press)

March 6, 2007, PARIS

Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and social theorist known for his provocative commentaries on consumerism, excess and what he said was the disappearance of reality, died Tuesday, his publishing house said. He was 77.

Baudrillard died at his home in Paris after a long illness, said Michel Delorme, of the Galilee publishing house. The two men had worked together since 1977, when "Oublier Foucault" (Forget Foucault) was published, one of about 30 books by Baudrillard, Delorme said by telephone.

Among his last published books was "Cool Memories V," in 2005. Baudrillard, a sociologist by training, is perhaps best known for his concepts of "hyperreality" and "simulation."

Impaired Short-term Motor Learning in Multiple Sclerosis: Evidence From Virtual Reality.

Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2007 Mar 9;

Authors: Leocani L, Comi E, Annovazzi P, Rovaris M, Rossi P, Cursi M, Comola M, Martinelli V, Comi G

OBJECTIVE: . Virtual reality (VR) has been proposed as a potentially useful tool for motor assessment and rehabilitation. The objective of this study was to investigate the usefulness of VR in the assessment of short-term motor learning in multiple sclerosis (MS). METHODS: . Twelve right-handed MS patients and 12 control individuals performed a motor-tracking task with their right upper limb, following the trajectory of an object projected on a screen along with online visual feedback on hand position from a sensor on the index finger. A pretraining test (3 trials), a training phase (12 trials), and a posttraining test (3 trials) were administered. Distances between performed and required trajectory were computed. RESULTS: . Both groups performed worse in depth planes compared to the frontal (x,z) plane (P <.006). MS patients performed worse than control individuals in the frontal plane at both evaluations (P <.015), whereas they had lower percent posttraining improvement in the depth planes only (P =.03). CONCLUSIONS: . The authors' VR system detected impaired motor learning in MS patients, especially for task features requiring a complex integration of sensory information (movement in the depth planes). These findings stress the need for careful customization of rehabilitation strategies, which must take into account the patients' motor, sensory, and cognitive limitations.

From Technology Review

Nokia wants to superimpose digital information on the real world using a smart cell phone.

A prototype uses a GPS sensor, a compass, and accelerometers. Using data from these sensors, the phone can calculate the location of just about any object its camera is aimed at:

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Via NeuroBot 

EU - India - China, Triangular Summer School on Computational Neuroscience

Performance on a virtual reality spatial memory navigation task in depressed patients.

Am J Psychiatry. 2007 Mar;164(3):516-9

Authors: Gould NF, Holmes MK, Fantie BD, Luckenbaugh DA, Pine DS, Gould TD, Burgess N, Manji HK, Zarate CA

OBJECTIVE: Findings on spatial memory in depression have been inconsistent. A navigation task based on virtual reality may provide a more sensitive and consistent measure of the hippocampal-related spatial memory deficits associated with depression. METHOD: Performance on a novel virtual reality navigation task and a traditional measure of spatial memory was assessed in 30 depressed patients (unipolar and bipolar) and 19 normal comparison subjects. RESULTS: Depressed patients performed significantly worse than comparison subjects on the virtual reality task, as assessed by the number of locations found in the virtual town. Between-group differences were not detected on the traditional measure. The navigation task showed high test-retest reliability. CONCLUSIONS: Depressed patients performed worse than healthy subjects on a novel spatial memory task. Virtual reality navigation may provide a consistent, sensitive measure of cognitive deficits in patients with affective disorders, representing a mechanism to study a putative endophenotype for hippocampal function.

Breaking the silence: brain-computer interfaces (BCI) for communication and motor control.

Psychophysiology. 2006 Nov;43(6):517-32

Authors: Birbaumer N

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) allow control of computers or external devices with regulation of brain activity alone. Invasive BCIs, almost exclusively investigated in animal models using implanted electrodes in brain tissue, and noninvasive BCIs using electrophysiological recordings in humans are described. Clinical applications were reserved with few exceptions for the noninvasive approach: communication with the completely paralyzed and locked-in syndrome with slow cortical potentials, sensorimotor rhythm and P300, and restoration of movement and cortical reorganization in high spinal cord lesions and chronic stroke. It was demonstrated that noninvasive EEG-based BCIs allow brain-derived communication in paralyzed and locked-in patients but not in completely locked-in patients. At present no firm conclusion about the clinical utility of BCI for the control of voluntary movement can be made. Invasive multielectrode BCIs in otherwise healthy animals allowed execution of reaching, grasping, and force variations based on spike patterns and extracellular field potentials. The newly developed fMRI-BCIs and NIRS-BCIs, like EEG BCIs, offer promise for the learned regulation of emotional disorders and also disorders of young children.

Via Neurobot

Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience

Berlin, Germany

The Bernstein Center Berlin solicits applications for an international PhD program in Computational Neuroscience

The PhD program is full-time for three years, and will start in October 2007. Course language is English. There are no tuition fees and the program offers a limited number of scholarships of up to € 1800,- per month initially for two years. The doctoral degree is awarded by the department of the student’s principal thesis advisor. Successful candidates additionally receive a certificate from the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience including a transcript of records.

Preliminary Results of an Open Label Study of Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback for the Treatment of Major Depression.

Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback. 2007 Mar 1;

Authors: Karavidas MK, Lehrer PM, Vaschillo E, Vaschillo B, Marin H, Buyske S, Malinovsky I, Radvanski D, Hassett A

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common mood disorder that can result in significant discomfort as well as interpersonal and functional disability. A growing body of research indicates that autonomic function is altered in depression, as evidenced by impaired baroreflex sensitivity, changes in heart rate, and reduced heart rate variability (HRV). Decreased vagal activity and increased sympathetic arousal have been proposed as major contributors to the increased risk of cardiovascular mortality in participants with MDD, and baroreflex gain is decreased. Study objectives: To assess the feasibility of using HRV biofeedback to treat major depression. Design: This was an open-label study in which all eleven participants received the treatment condition. Participants attended 10 weekly sessions. Questionnaires and physiological data were collected in an orientation (baseline) session and Treatment Sessions 1, 4, 7 and 10. Measurements and results: Significant improvements were noted in the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAM-D) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) by Session 4, with concurrent increases in SDNN, standard deviation of normal cardiac interbeat intervals) an electrocardiographic estimate of overall measure of adaptability. SDNN decreased to baseline levels at the end of treatment and at follow-up, but clinically and statistically significant improvement in depression persisted. Main effects for task and session occurred for low frequency range (LF) and SDNN. Increases in these variables also occurred during breathing at one's resonant frequency, which targets baroreflex function and vagus nerve activity, showing that subjects performed the task correctly Conclusions: HRV biofeedback appears to be a useful adjunctive treatment for the treatment of MDD, associated with large acute increases in HRV and some chronic increases, suggesting increased cardiovagal activity. It is possible that regular exercise of homeostatic reflexes helps depression even when changes in baseline HRV are smaller. A randomized controlled trial is warranted.

Via kurzweilAI.net

Researchers at Berlin's Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience claim they have identified people's decisions about how they would later do a high-level mental activity - in this case, adding versus subtracting. 

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Via KurzweilAI.net

The startup company Emotiv Systems has developed a wearable EEG system that allows players to mentally interact with video games, by controlling the on-screen action.

From Technology Review 

The role of thought suppression in the relationship between mindfulness meditation and alcohol use.

Addict Behav. 2007 Jan 23;

Authors: Bowen S, Witkiewitz K, Dillworth TM, Marlatt GA

Previous studies have demonstrated that attempts to suppress thoughts about using substances may actually lead to increases in substance use. Vipassana, a mindfulness meditation practice, emphasizes acceptance, rather than suppression, of unwanted thoughts. A study by Bowen and colleagues examining the effects of a Vipassana course on substance use in an incarcerated population showed significant reductions in substance use among the Vipassana group as compared to a treatment - usual control condition [Bowen S., Witkiewitz K., Dillworth T.M., Chawla N., Simpson T.L., Ostafin B.D., et al. (2006). Mindfulness Meditation and Substance Use in an Incarcerated Population. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.]. The current study further examines the mediating effects of thought suppression in the relationship between participation in the course and subsequent alcohol use. Those who participated in the course reported significant decreases in avoidance of thoughts when compared to controls. The decrease in avoidance partially mediated effects of the course on post-release alcohol use and consequences.

Via Mattew Lombard

(From Eureka Street magazine ("a publication on public affairs, the arts and theology")

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Via Future-Making Serious Games 

 
Friday, February 23 2007

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Via Medgadget 

A company called Blink Twice is developing a speech-generating device that promises to improve the way differently-abled children communicate with their world:

Via KurzweilAI.net 

Researchers at Medtronic are developing an implantable device designed to electrically stimulate areas of the brain to control diseases such as Parkinson's disease, epilepsy and depression.

From EEtimes