Positive Technology Journal

Via Washington University in St Luis

A study by Daniel Moran and coll. has focused on studying perception and playing visual tricks on macaque monkeys and some human subjects. These scholars have created a virtual reality video game to trick the monkeys into thinking that they were tracing ellipses with their hands, though they actually were moving their hands in a circle.

Then researchers monitored nerve cells in the monkeys enabling them to see what areas of the brain represented the circle and which areas represented the ellipse. They found that the primary motor cortex represented the actual movement while the signals from cells in a neighboring area, called the ventral premotor cortex, were generating elliptical shapes. The research shows how the mind creates its sense of order in the world and then adjusts on the fly to eliminate distortions.

For instance, the first time you don a new pair of bifocals, there is a difference in what you perceive visually and what your hand does when you go to reach for something. With time, though, the brain adjusts so that vision and action become one. The ventral premotor complex plays a major role in that process. Knowing how the brain works to distinguish between action and perception will enhance efforts to build biomedical devices that can control artificial limbs, some day enabling the disabled to move a prosthetic arm or leg by thinking about it.

Results were published in the Jan. 16, 2004 issue of Science.

Effect of tutorial input in addition to augmented feedback on manual dexterity training and its retention.

Eur J Dent Educ. 2006 Feb;10(1):24-31

Authors: Wierinck E, Puttemans V, van Steenberghe D

Abstract Virtual reality (VR) simulators can be used as tools in manual dexterity training. The visual feedback guides the subject towards proper performance but creates, at the same time, some dependency on this feedback. To overcome this drawback, the effect of adjunct tutorial input on motor learning behaviour was examined. Novice dental students were randomly assigned to one of two training groups or to a non-training control group, given the task of preparing a geometrical class 1 cavity in phantom teeth. The feedback (FB) group trained under augmented visual feedback conditions, provided by the VR system (DentSim(TM)). The feedback-plus (FB+) group received, in addition, standardised expert input to enrich the augmented feedback information. The control group, consisting of same year students, did not participate in any training programme. All preparations were evaluated by the VR scoring system. Performance analyses revealed an overall trend towards significant improvement with practice for the training groups. Performance of the FB+ group was most accurate across training. After 1 day and 3 weeks of no practice, both training groups outperformed the control group. After 4 months, however, only the FB+ condition was significantly more accurate than the control group. The same tendency was noted for the transfer tests. Consequently, cavity preparation experience on a VR system under the condition of frequently provided feedback supplemented with expert input was most beneficial to long time learning.

Meditation therapy for anxiety disorders.

Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2006;(1):CD004998

Authors: Krisanaprakornkit T, Krisanaprakornkit W, Piyavhatkul N, Laopaiboon M

BACKGROUND: Anxiety disorders are characterised by long term worry, tension, nervousness, fidgeting and symptoms of autonomic system hyperactivity. Meditation is an age-old self regulatory strategy which is gaining more interest in mental health and psychiatry. Meditation can reduce arousal state and may ameliorate anxiety symptoms in various anxiety conditions. OBJECTIVES: To investigate the effectiveness of meditation therapy in treating anxiety disorders SEARCH STRATEGY: Electronic databases searched include CCDANCTR-Studies and CCDANCTR-References, complementary and alternative medicine specific databases, Science Citation Index, Health Services/Technology Assessment Text database, and grey literature databases. Conference proceedings, book chapters and references were checked. Study authors and experts from religious/spiritual organisations were contacted. SELECTION CRITERIA: Types of studies: Randomised controlled trials.Types of participants: patients with a diagnosis of anxiety disorders, with or without another comorbid psychiatric condition.Types of interventions: concentrative meditation or mindfulness meditation. Comparison conditions: one or combination of 1) pharmacological therapy 2) other psychological treatment 3) other methods of meditation 4) no intervention or waiting list.Types of outcome: 1) improvement in clinical anxiety scale 2) improvement in anxiety level specified by triallists, or global improvement 3) acceptability of treatment, adverse effects 4) dropout. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Data were independently extracted by two reviewers using a pre-designed data collection form. Any disagreements were discussed with a third reviewer, and the authors of the studies were contacted for further information. MAIN RESULTS: Two randomised controlled studies were eligible for inclusion in the review. Both studies were of moderate quality and used active control comparisons (another type of meditation, relaxation, biofeedback). Anti-anxiety drugs were used as standard treatment. The duration of trials ranged from 3 months (12 weeks) to 18 weeks. In one study transcendental meditation showed a reduction in anxiety symptoms and electromyography score comparable with electromyography-biofeedback and relaxation therapy. Another study compared Kundalini Yoga (KY), with Relaxation/Mindfulness Meditation. The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale showed no statistically significant difference between groups. The overall dropout rate in both studies was high (33-44%). Neither study reported on adverse effects of meditation. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: The small number of studies included in this review do not permit any conclusions to be drawn on the effectiveness of meditation therapy for anxiety disorders. Transcendental meditation is comparable with other kinds of relaxation therapies in reducing anxiety, and Kundalini Yoga did not show significant effectiveness in treating obsessive-compulsive disorders compared with Relaxation/Meditation. Drop out rates appear to be high, and adverse effects of meditation have not been reported. More trials are needed.

From the conference's website

Academics and practitioners with an interest in the concept of (tele)presence are invited to submit their work for presentation at PRESENCE 2006 at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio, August 24-26, 2006.

The ninth in a series of highly successful international workshops, PRESENCE 2006 will provide an open discussion forum to share ideas regarding concepts and theories, measurement techniques, technology, and applications related to presence, the psychological state or subjective perception in which a person fails to accurately and completely acknowledge the role of technology in an experience, including the sense of 'being there' experienced by users of advanced media such as virtual reality.

The concept of presence has been the focus of increasing scholarly attention since at least Minsky's "Telepresence" in 1980. Recently there has been a burst of funded research activity in this area with the European FET Presence Research initiative. What do we really know about presence and its determinants? How can presence be successfully delivered with today's technology? This conference invites papers that are based on empirical results from studies of presence and related issues and/or that make substantial advances in theoretical understanding of presence and/or that contribute to the technology for the delivery of presence. High quality papers which make substantial contributions to the field are sought; submissions will be rigorously evaluated by peer reviewers.

Work accepted for presentation will be included in the official conference proceedings and posted on the ISPR web site. Some of the presented papers will be selected for publication in one or more special issues of CyberPsychology & Behavior or Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

PRESENCE 2006 takes place in Cleveland and is hosted by Cleveland State University. The conference is organized by ISPR, the International Society for Presence Research.

Meditation potentially capable of increasing susceptibility to epilepsy - A follow-up hypothesis.

Med Hypotheses. 2006 Jan 21;

Authors: Jaseja H

Developing prosthetics to treat cognitive disabilities resulting from acquired brain injuries

Neurol Res. 2002 Mar;24(2):116-24

Authors: Schiff ND, Plum F, Rezai AR

Persistent cognitive disabilities represent the most troublesome consequences of acquired brain injury. Although these problems are widely recognized, few neuroprosthetic efforts have focused on developing therapeutic strategies aimed at improving general cognitive functions such as sustained attention, intention, working memory or awareness. If possible, effective modulation of these neuropsychologic components might improve recovery of interactive behaviors. The emerging field of neuromodulation holds promise that technologies developed to treat other neurological disorders may be adapted to address the cognitive problems of patients suffering from acquired brain injuries. We here discuss initial efforts at neuromodulation in patients in the persistent vegetative state and aspects of recent studies of the underlying neurobiology of PVS and other severe brain injuries. Innovative strategies for open-loop and closed-loop neuromodulation of impaired cognitive function are outlined. We discuss the possibilities of linking neuromodulation techniques to underlying neuronal mechanisms underpinning cognitive rehabilitation maneuvers. Ethical considerations surrounding the development of these strategies are reviewed.

Neuropsychological technologies in rehabilitation.

J Head Trauma Rehabil. 2002 Oct;17(5):369-77

Authors: Chute DL

OBJECTIVE: To provide an introduction and a conceptual context for the articles presented in this special edition of the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation on neuropsychological technologies. SUMMARY: Many clinical assessments in neuropsychology are metamorphosing from a psychometric search for a lesion to a functional image of the working brain. Behavioral probes increasingly employ technology to provide more ecologically valid stimuli to elicit diagnostically relevant responses. Intervention strategies include an expanding range of assistive devices and technologically based treatments. The advent of the microprocessor and discipline specific programming have allowed certain aspects of rehabilitation practice to incorporate these new assessment and intervention strategies. For example, the development of neuropsychological technologies has already lead to computer based prosthetics and orthotics, cognitive probes with millisecond accurate links to functional imaging, virtual reality managed ecological assessments, cognitive retraining, assistive devices, and online, and "real-time" database-driven evaluations. Emerging technologies offer the potential for personal, portable, everyday brain imaging and rehabilitation systems. Few psychologists, physiatrists, or allied health professionals are formally trained in technological development. What has emerged thus far is a collection of individual efforts that remain to be integrated into more comprehensive tools for the rehabilitation professions. The selective history of neuropsychological technologies presented here is meant to illustrate past difficulties in the emergence of this sub-specialty and point to new applications and technological integration that may prove fruitful. The convergence of neuroengineering, adaptive assessments, everyday neuroimaging, neuroinformatics, and educational neuroimaging, presage such future developments in neuropsychological technologies.

A time-series prediction approach for feature extraction in a brain-computer interface.

IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2005 Dec;13(4):461-7

Authors: Coyle D, Prasad G, McGinnity TM

This paper presents a feature extraction procedure (FEP) for a brain-computer interface (BCI) application where features are extracted from the electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded from subjects performing right and left motor imagery. Two neural networks (NNs) are trained to perform one-step-ahead predictions for the EEG time-series data, where one NN is trained on right motor imagery and the other on left motor imagery. Features are derived from the power (mean squared) of the prediction error or the power of the predicted signals. All features are calculated from a window through which all predicted signals pass. Separability of features is achieved due to the morphological differences of the EEG signals and each NNs specialization to the type of data on which it is trained. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is used for classification. This FEP is tested on three subjects off-line and classification accuracy (CA) rates range between 88% and 98%. The approach compares favorably to a well-known adaptive autoregressive (AAR) FEP and also a linear AAR model based prediction approach.

Via Neuro-IT mailing list 

August 7th – September 1st  2006, Arcachon, France

via Neuro-IT mailing list 

ISABEL 2006

Bio-Inspired Models and Hardware for Brain-like Intelligent Functions

August 24-25, 2006, Seoul, Korea

Topics include, but are not limited to:

.    Models of auditory pathway
.    Models of visual pathway
.    Models of cognition, learning, and inference
.    Models of attention, emotion, and consciousness
.    Models of autonomous behavior
.    Hardware implementation of bio-inspired models
.    Engineering applications of bio-inspired models

Visit the conference website for detailed information

Musikhuset Esbjerg, Centre for the Performing Arts and International Conferences, Denmark, 18-20 September 2006

From the conference website

The purpose of the sixth International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies is to provide a forum for international experts and researchers to present and review how advances in the general area of Virtual Reality can be used to assist people with Disability. This international conference will encompass all aspects of technology used in Virtual Reality systems. Papers are sought in which technical innovation is backed up by evidence of original and practical implementation, or which promise practical implementation in the very near future. Presentations which include video material and/or experimental systems are particularly welcome. Facilities for presenting such material will be available at the conference.

The research presented at the conference will be published in a peer reviewed Proceedings which will be made widely available. It is hoped that the conference will act as a focus for international collaboration.

ICDVRAT 2006 follows on from the success of the conference series: Maidenhead, UK (1996), Skövde, Sweden (1998); Alghero, Sardinia (2000); Veszprém, Hungary (2002); and Oxford, UK (2004). Full papers presented at all previous conferences are available here. Final abstracts from all papers accepted for ICDVRAT 2006 will be made available at the same site at the time of the conference with Full Proceedings book and CDROM archive available to delegates at the conference itself. Papers from 2006 will be made available online in Spring 2007.

Via the Presence L-Listserve

This newspaper article from ContractorUK reports on results of a study by Steve Pace, who has found a link between flow state and the sense of "being there" that gamers experience when immersed in a virtual world.

The study is very interesting, though the idea that flow and presence share a common ground is not new. For example Draper and coll. (1996) have speculated that presence could be a specific kind of flow experience occurring during teleoperations. Jacobson (2002) has argued that when a virtual world is viewed as a locus of activity, flow explains presence. I have expressed a similar idea in this book chapter.

References:

Draper, J. V., & Blair, L. M. (1996). Workload, flow, and telepresence during teleoperation. Paper presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Minneapolis, MN.

Gamers 'flow' into the zone

Square-eyed computer gamers occupy the same mental ‘zone’ as athletes preparing to run a race, new research reveals. Regardless of format, gamers lose track of time and temporarily forget about their physical surroundings and usual concerns, such as eating and going to the toilet. In this state – technically known as ‘flow,’ they occupy the same mental zone as athletes or others whose, “attention is intently focused on an activity that is challenging yet enjoyable.” Such is the verdict of Dr Steve Pace of the Central Queensland University, who has been awarded a $10,000 grant to probe into the minds of computer game players. His seminal study has uncovered not just ‘flow,’ but also that gamers experience a sense of ‘telepresence’ - serving to cocoon PC or console enthusiasts in a virtual world. According to the study, telepresence is the technical term for when players feel present in an environment by means of a communication medium. The environment may be a real place such as a distant space viewed through a video camera, or an artificial place such as an animated world as in World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto Vice City.

October 10-13, 2006 in Geneva, Switzerland

The conference aims to connect leading health information and communication technology experts from Europe and beyond in educational sessions, vendor exhibitions, interoperability demonstrations, exchange of experiences and networking sessions, and other professional development opportunities.

The focus of the conference is on the role and impact Health IT has on the health sector in Europe and other parts of the world, including the Middle East and Africa. The educational sessions will address experiences from deployed services, and focus on proven benefits in quality and efficiency.

Visit the conference website for further information about the event and related call for papers

Chris McKinstry, founder of the Mindpixel project, has expressed suicide intentions on his blog.

Two postings appeared on Friday, 20 January 2006, suggesting that McKinstry has committed suicide by drug overdose.

The wikipedia entry on Chris McKinstry has been upgraded on Friday with his suicide announce. This contains a link to a forum, where he re-posted the suicidal note appeared on his blog. McKinstry said he was posting from an Internet cafè in Chile. Forum participants have tried to dissuade McKinstry and to identify his precise location in Chile tracking the IP address. They also contacted the US embassy in Santiago, which turned the case over to the Canadian embassy (McKinstry is a Canadian citizen).

There have been no new postings on the forum since yesterday morning.

This report by CBS news argues that brain fitness is about to become big business. In support of this argument, the article cites the example of Posit Science, a company which has developed a brain fitness program, which is thought to improve brain functions. Though personally I do not know any scientific paper showing evidence of the effectiveness of this specific program, the founder of the company, Dr. Michael Merzenich, is a renowned neuroscientist, so I expect that the program he has developed is based on rigorous scientific foundations.

Via we-make-money-not-art 

 

Movement & Perception Lab, affiliated to CNRS and University of the Mediterranean is offering a permanent position, at the level of Assistant Professor. The lab's main topic is the study of central and peripheral mechanisms for the control and perception of human movements.

The candidate will be part of the development of Virtual Reality (Movelite) and Motion Analysis (Vicon) technological platforms, designed for experimental investigations of human movement production and perception.

Research topics include (but not limited to): Visual control of displacement, Spatial orientation, multi-sensory integration, immersion and presence, models of human motion

As concerns teaching, the candidate will be involved in Sports Sciences and in Human Movement Sciences courses. Teaching fields will include Neuroscience and Psychology. One objective will be to organize a course in Virtual Reality applied to the above scientific domains. The candidate will demonstrate his/her competence in Neuroscience and Psychology. Experience in Virtual Reality will be appreciated. International experience and indexed publications will be a plus.

Motor learning: its relevance to stroke recovery and neurorehabilitation

Curr Opin Neurol. 2006 Feb;19(1):84-90

Authors: Krakauer JW

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Much of neurorehabilitation rests on the assumption that patients can improve with practice. This review will focus on arm movements and address the following questions: (i) What is motor learning? (ii) Do patients with hemiparesis have a learning deficit? (iii) Is recovery after injury a form of motor learning? (iv) Are approaches based on motor learning principles useful for rehabilitation? RECENT FINDINGS: Motor learning can be broken into kinematic and dynamic components. Studies in healthy subjects suggest that retention of motor learning is best accomplished with variable training schedules. Animal models and functional imaging in humans show that the mature brain can undergo plastic changes during both learning and recovery. Quantitative motor control approaches allow differentiation between compensation and true recovery, although both improve with practice. Several promising new rehabilitation approaches are based on theories of motor learning. These include impairment oriented-training (IOT), constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT), electromyogram (EMG)-triggered neuromuscular stimulation, robotic interactive therapy and virtual reality (VR). SUMMARY: Motor learning mechanisms are operative during spontaneous stroke recovery and interact with rehabilitative training. For optimal results, rehabilitation techniques should be geared towards patients' specific motor deficits and possibly combined, for example, CIMT with VR. Two critical questions that should always be asked of a rehabilitation technique are whether gains persist for a significant period after training and whether they generalize to untrained tasks.