Positive Technology Journal

Via Medgadget

BioMAP (Biological Marker of Auditory Processing) is a new, easy-to-use diagnostic tool that can quickly identify a sizeable subset of learning disabled children. Based on more than a decade of neuroscience research at Northwestern University, it is expected to become one of the most important resources for learning disabilities specialists trying to identify appropriate treatments for children with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities:

"Learning disabilities are believed to affect nearly one in 10 children, but their causes are difficult to pinpoint," says Nina Kraus, director of Northwestern University's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory. Kraus and Northwestern researchers Trent Nicol and Steven Zecker have found that a third of the 1,000-plus children they have tested show a dysfunction in the way the brainstem encodes basic sounds of speech...

"The beauty of BioMAP as a diagnostic tool is that it does not require a child to follow directions or perform an assigned task," says Kraus. "Instead, it objectively measures whether a child's nervous system is able to accurately translate sounds into brain waves." If it can't, the affected child will have difficulty discriminating between speech sounds. And that difficulty at the most fundamental level complicates a wide range of learning activities, including reading and writing, Kraus finds.

Getting objective measures from BioMAP software is simple. "All a child needs to do is stay awake and sit quietly for 20 to 30 minutes," says Kraus, Northwestern's Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences, Neurobiology and Otolaryngology.

Re-blogged from KurzweilAI.net

A new device being created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University uses electrodes attached to the neck and face to detect the movements that occur as a person silently mouths words and phrases.

Using this data, a computer can work out the sounds being formed and then build these sounds up into words. The system is then able to translate the words into another language, which is read out by a synthetic voice.

Read the full story

Re-blogged from Kurzweil.net

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth have developed an electronic switch based on DNA, a world-first bionanotechnology breakthrough that provides the foundation for the interface between living organisms and the computer world...

Read the full story here  

Via IEET 

Have a look at this very interesting article entitled "Cognitive Enhancement: Methods, Ethics, Regulatory Challenges" written by Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg. It focuses on the current state of the art in cognitive enhancement methods and consider their prospects for the near-term future. Authors also review some of ethical issues arising from these technologies.

Re-blogged from Textually.org

According to Undeniable Facts with 10 cell phones, you can make goldfish do a flip [via Digg]

There's even a video to prove it:

7-8-9 February 2007 Geneva, Switzerland. From the LIFT conference website 

LIFT is a gathering of talented observers, explorers, and builders who discuss the current challenges and creative solutions presented by emerging technologies. LIFT is three days to face cutting edge business models, bold predictions, radical thinking, and get new ideas to inject into your own part of the planet.

LIFT has a simple goal: connect people who are passionate about new applications of technology and propel their conversations into the broader world to improve life and work.

Who will talk? Adam Greenfield, Frédéric Kaplan, Sampo Karjalainen, Anne Galloway, Paola Ghillani, Julian Bleecker, Daniel Kaplan, Christophe Guignard, Jan Christophe Zoels, Colin Henderson, Nathan Eagle, Bernino Lind, Lee Bryant, Daniela Cerqui, Jan Chipchase, Beth Krasna, Régine Debatty, Stephanie Hannon, Pierre Chappaz, and many others.

The event will be held at the Geneva International Conference Center. It is organized by a group of international practitioners.

Zack Lynch (Brainwaves) has announced the launch of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization:

The Neurotechnology Industry Organization (NIO) is “a non-profit trade association that represents a broad spectrum of companies involved in neurotechnology (drugs, devices and diagnostics), neuroscience research centers and brain disease advocacy groups across the United States and the world. NIO’s mission is to accelerate cures for brain and nervous system diseases by promoting the neurotechnology industry’s progress, advocating the industry’s position to government officials, and providing business development services to its members”

PT wishes you good luck for your organization, Zack!

Error mapping controller: a closed loop neuroprosthesis controlled by artificial neural networks  

Authors: Alessandra Pedrocchi, Simona Ferrante, Elena De Momi and Giancarlo Ferrigno

Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, Oct 25 2006

Background: The design of an optimal neuroprostheses controller and its clinical use presents several challenges. First, the physiological system is characterized by highly inter-subjects varying properties and also by non stationary behaviour with time, due to conditioning level and fatigue. Secondly, the easiness to use in routine clinical practice requires experienced operators. Therefore, feedback controllers, avoiding long setting procedures, are required. Methods: The error mapping controller (EMC) here proposed uses artificial neural networks (ANNs) both for the design of an inverse model and of a feedback controller. A neuromuscular model is used to validate the performance of the controllers in simulations. The EMC performance is compared to a Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) included in an anti wind-up scheme (called PIDAW) and to a controller with an ANN as inverse model and a PID in the feedback loop (NEUROPID). In addition tests on the EMC robustness in response to variations of the Plant parameters and to mechanical disturbances are carried out. Results: The EMC shows improvements with respect to the other controllers in tracking accuracy, capability to prolong exercise managing fatigue, robustness to parameter variations and resistance to mechanical disturbances. Conclusion: Different from the other controllers, the EMC is capable of balancing between tracking accuracy and mapping of fatigue during the exercise. In this way, it avoids overstressing muscles and allows a considerable prolongation of the movement. The collection of the training sets does not require any particular experimental setting and can be introduced in routine clinical practice.

Long-term motor cortex plasticity induced by an electronic neural implant

Nature advance online publication 22 October 2006 | doi:10.1038/nature05226

Authors: Andrew Jackson, Jaideep Mavoori and Eberhard E. Fetz

It has been proposed that the efficacy of neuronal connections is strengthened when there is a persistent causal relationship between presynaptic and postsynaptic activity. Such activity-dependent plasticity may underlie the reorganization of cortical representations during learning, although direct in vivo evidence is lacking. Here we show that stable reorganization of motor output can be induced by an artificial connection between two sites in the motor cortex of freely behaving primates. An autonomously operating electronic implant used action potentials recorded on one electrode to trigger electrical stimuli delivered at another location. Over one or more days of continuous operation, the output evoked from the recording site shifted to resemble the output from the corresponding stimulation site, in a manner consistent with the potentiation of synaptic connections between the artificially synchronized populations of neurons. Changes persisted in some cases for more than one week, whereas the output from sites not incorporated in the connection was unaffected. This method for inducing functional reorganization in vivo by using physiologically derived stimulus trains may have practical application in neurorehabilitation after injury.

Via KurzweilAI.net

An implantable silicon chip that faithfully mimics the neural circuitry of a real retina could lead to better bionic eyes for those with vision loss and would remove the need for a camera and external computer.

The top image shows the raw output of the retina chip, the middle one a picture processed from it and the third shows how a moving face would appear.

The chip, created by University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University researchers, measures 3.5 x 3.3 millimeters and contains 5760 silicon phototransistors, which take the place of light-sensitive neurons in a living retina. These are connected up to 3600 transistors, which mimic the nerve cells that process light information and pass it on to the brain for higher processing. There are 13 different types of transistor, each with slightly different performance, mimicking different types of actual nerve cells.

Read full article

Via Human Productivity Lab

Toshiba has unveiled a new head-mounted display - the "Hyper-Reality Head-Dome Projector" that allows the wearer to experience a full 360-degree view on a 40 centimetre dome-shaped screen... here are some technical details (from SID2006)

the system consists of a compact dome-shaped screen with a radius of 40 cm, a mobile projector with ultra-wide projection lens, and LED light sources. The system exhibits a wide viewing angle of 120° horizontally by 70° vertically without head tracking, and 360° × 360° with head tracking.

 

Via Mauro Cherubini's weblog

The always interesting Mauro Cherubini's moleskin has a post about a tool for designing a content that utilize plants as an input-output interface. Dubbed I/O Plant, the system allows to connect actuators, sensors and database servers to living plants, making them a part of an electric circuit or a network terminal.

From WashingtonPost.com

Researchers at Cornell University's Weill Medical College in New York, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in Edison, N.J., have tried deep-brain stimulation (a procedure that involves inserting tiny electrodes into the brain to stimulate specific regions) on a patient in a minimally conscious state. In previous studies, DBS has been successfully used for treating Parkinson's disease, severe pain, epilepsy, depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The patient was a 38-year-old man who had suffered a severe brain injury that left him in a minimally conscious state for six years, unable to communicate or function. After an intensive four-month evaluation to assess his capabilities, surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic implanted electrodes into parts of his brain known as the thalamus, believed to be involved in helping integrate the functions of other areas.

According to the researchers, the stimulation promoted significant improvement in the man's abilities to move, communicate and function, including his abilities to eat and respond verbally. They reported that even when the stimulation is off, the patient continues to demonstrate improved "gestural and verbal communication abilities," which suggests that the stimulation may be having lasting effects on his brain. These findings were presented at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Atlanta.

Via UsabilityNews

Event Date: 28 January 2007 to 28 January 2007
Tangible Play: Research and Design for Tangible and Tabletop Games is a workshop at the 2007 Intelligent User Interfaces Conference taking place from January 28-31, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

DATES:
[ Nov 20, 2006 ] - Submission deadline for position papers (in camera-ready form)
[ Dec 11, 2006 ] - Author notification date
[ Jan 28, 2007 ] - Date of Tangible Play @ IUI 2007

WORKSHOP AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION:
The workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working on subjects related to digital games with tangible interaction. We would like to involve participants with backgrounds in academia as well as industry, from diverse fields such as HCI, computer science, edutainment, interaction design and game design. Some of the topics we plan to address during the workshop are: different tangible interaction styles, designing for specific game types, and the advantages and disadvantages of different sensing and object tracking technologies.

This one-day workshop will consist of a morning and afternoon session. The morning session will include an introduction and position paper presentations by workshop participants. The afternoon session will be an informal and interactive discussion in break-out groups on the following subtopics: tangible interaction, game design, sensing technologies, evaluation, marketability and collaboration. We will also have a guest speaker from Philips Research, who will give a special presentation on the Entertaible from an industry perspective.

Interested participants are invited to submit a 4-page position paper using the ACM-template, which can be found on the website indicated below. Papers may address any topic related to tangible or digital tabletop gaming, from game case studies, to research on sensing technologies, theoretical overviews, or the design of tangible objects for game interaction. The organizers will try to create a diverse mix of participants from academia as well as industry and from different backgrounds and fields.

* Please submit position papers to: Elise van den Hoven, e.v.d.hoven@tue.nl

For more information, please contact the organizers:

Elise van den Hoven (e.v.d.hoven@tue.nl) Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Ali Mazalek (mazalek@gatech.edu) Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA, USA

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.

Via Networked Performance

Saturday 21 October 2006, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam: 11.00 - 12.30: Bioinformatics dept., Faculty building, 15th floor 12.30 - 18.00: Sophia Children's Hospital, Cinema 3rd floor.

Test_Lab:/ Immersive Mixed Reality Environments/ is the product of a unique collaboration between the Erasmus Medical Centre and V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media with the aim of opening the dialogue between scientists and artists that apply Virtual Reality in their research and art practice. The event consists of demonstrations by Virtual Reality artists and scientists providing hands-on experiences with Immersive Mixed Reality Environments, and presentations by renowned international speakers presenting the latest in Virtual Reality in science and art. See below for the program details, a description of the projects that will be demonstrated, and the invited speakers that will present their work in the seminar.

Test_Lab is a bi-monthly public event hosted by V2_ that provides an informal setting to demonstrate, test, present, and/or discuss artistic research and development (aRt&D).

The event is free of charge, but registration is required before the 19th of October. For further information and registration please contact Remco Beeskow at press@v2.nl (tel: +31 (0)10 206 72 72) or Fred Balvert at f.balvert[at]erasmusmc.nl (tel: +31(0)6 41431721). Also visit www.v2.nl and www.erasmusmc.nl