Publications related to Size and Viewpoint of an Embodied Virtual Body Affect the Processing of Painful Stimuli

Customizing the human-avatar mapping based on EEG error related potentials during avatar-based interaction

Ronan Boulic, Ricardo Andres Chavarriaga Lozano, Bruno Herbelin, José del Rocio Millán Ruiz, Olaf Blanke, Fumiaki Iwane, Thibault Serge Mario Porssut

Objective. A key challenge of virtual reality (VR) applications is to maintain a reliable human-avatar mapping. Users may lose the sense of controlling (sense of agency), owning (sense of body ownership), or being located (sense of self-location) inside th ...

2024

A Stand-Alone Augmented Reality Intervention for Chronic Pain using Embodied Systolic Stimulation

Skander Mensi, Sylvain Cardin, Oliver Alan Kannape, Robert Leeb, Fabien Bourban, Alexis Dorier, Andrea Serino

Chronic pain presents a tremendous personal, societal, and financial burden. Treatment options are often limited to managing symptoms as opposed to treating the causes, and the consequences of pharmacological treatments can be immensely harmful as evidence ...

IEEE2023

Saliency prediction in 360° architectural scenes: Performance and impact of daylight variations

Marilyne Andersen, Sabine Süsstrunk, Kynthia Chamilothori, Bahar Aydemir, Caroline Karmann, Seungryong Kim

Saliency models are image-based prediction models that estimate human visual attention. Such models, when applied to architectural spaces, could pave the way for design decisions where visual attention is taken into account. In this study, we tested the pe ...

2023

Prefrontal engrams of long-term fear memory perpetuate pain perception

Johannes Gräff, Yechao Han

A painful episode can lead to a life-long increase in an individual's experience of pain. Fearful anticipation of imminent pain could play a role in this phenomenon, but the neurobiological underpinnings are unclear because fear can both suppress and enhan ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

Towards a multiscale point cloud structural similarity metric

Touradj Ebrahimi, Davi Nachtigall Lazzarotto

Point clouds are effective data structures for the rep- resentation of three-dimensional media and hence adopted in a wide range of practical applications. In many cases, the portrayed data is expected to be visualized by humans. After acquisition, point c ...

IEEE2023

'connEcted caesarean section': creating a virtual link between MOthers and their infanTs to ImprOve maternal childbirth experieNce - study protocol for a PILOT trial (e-motion-pilot)

Sandra Maria Marcadent, Karine Lepigeon, Fiona Corbaz, David Desseauve

IntroductionOne-third of mothers rate their childbirth as traumatic. The prevalence of childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder (CB-PTSD) is 4.7%. Skin-to-skin contact is a protective factor against CB-PTSD. However, during a caesarean section (CS ...

BMJ PUBLISHING GROUP2023

Bodily self-consciousness as a framework to link sensory information and self-related components of episodic memory: behavioral, neuroimaging, and clinical evidence

Nathalie Heidi Meyer

The recollection of sensory information and subjective experience related to a personal past event depends on our episodic memory (EM). At the neural level, EM retrieval is linked with the reinstatement of hippocampal activity thought to recollect the sens ...

EPFL2023

From finger animation to full-body embodiment of avatars with different morphologies and proportions

Mathias Guy Delahaye

VR (Virtual Reality) is a real-time simulation that creates the subjective illusion of being in a virtual world. This thesis explores how integrating the user's body and fingers can be achieved and beneficial for the user to experience VR. At the advent of ...

EPFL2023

Targeted dorsal root entry zone stimulation alleviates pain due to meralgia paresthetica

Léonie Asboth, Grégoire Courtine, Nicolas Hankov, Robin Jonathan Demesmaeker, Jocelyne Bloch, Jimmy James Ravier, Molywan Vat, Viviana Aureli

Objective. Meralgia paresthetica (MP) is a mononeuropathy of the exclusively sensory lateral femoral cutaneous nerve (LFCN) that is difficult to treat with conservative treatments. Afferents from the LFCN enter the spinal cord through the dorsal root entry ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

Scrambler Therapy for Chronic Pain after Burns and Its Effect on the Cerebral Pain Network: A Prospective, Double-Blinded, Randomized Controlled Trial

Chang-Hyun Park

Chronic pain is common after burn injuries, and post-burn neuropathic pain is the most important complication that is difficult to treat. Scrambler therapy (ST) is a non-invasive modality that uses patient-specific electrocutaneous nerve stimulation and is ...

MDPI2022

Tonic pain alters functional connectivity of the descending pain modulatory network involving amygdala, periaqueductal gray, parabrachial nucleus and anterior cingulate cortex

Anne-Christine Schmid

Introduction: Resting state functional connectivity (FC) is widely used to assess functional brain alterations in patients with chronic pain. However, reports of FC accompanying tonic pain in pain-free persons are rare. A network we term the Descending Pai ...

ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE2022

Reaching articular limits can negatively impact embodiment in virtual reality

Ronan Boulic, Bruno Herbelin, Olaf Blanke, Thibault Serge Mario Porssut

Providing Virtual Reality(VR) users with a 3D representation of their body complements the experience of immersion and presence in the virtual world with the experience of being physically located and more personally involved. A full-body avatar representa ...

2022

Breathing control, brain, and bodily self-consciousness: Toward immersive digiceuticals to alleviate respiratory suffering

Olaf Blanke, Sophie Jacqueline Andrée Betka

Breathing is peculiar among autonomic functions through several characteristics. It generates a very rich afferent traffic from an array of structures belonging to the respiratory system to various areas of the brain. It is intimately associated with bodil ...

2022

Bio-inspired Reflex System for Learning Visual Information for Resilient Robotic Manipulation

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge

Humans have an incredible sense of self-preservation that is both instilled, and also learned through experience. One system which contributes to this is the pain and reflex system which both minimizes damage through involuntary reflex ac- tions and also s ...

2022

A comprehensive review of digital twin - part 1: modeling and twinning enabling technologies

Sayan Ghosh, Chao Hu, Olga Fink

As an emerging technology in the era of Industry 4.0, digital twin is gaining unprecedented attention because of its promise to further optimize process design, quality control, health monitoring, decision and policy making, and more, by comprehensively mo ...

SPRINGER2022

During capsaicin-induced central sensitization, brush allodynia is associated with baseline warmth sensitivity, whereas mechanical hyperalgesia is associated with painful mechanical sensibility, anxiety and somatization

Anne-Christine Schmid

Background Mechanical hyperalgesia and allodynia incidence varies considerably amongst neuropathic pain patients. This study explored whether sensory or psychological factors associate with mechanical hyperalgesia and brush allodynia in a human experimenta ...

WILEY2021

Cogno-Vest: A Torso-Worn, Force Display to Experimentally Induce Specific Hallucinations and Related Bodily Sensations

Hannes Bleuler, Olaf Blanke, Oliver Alan Kannape, Masayuki Hara, Kenny Jeanmonod, Atena Fadaeijouybari, Jevita Potheegadoo

Recent advances in virtual reality and robotic technologies have allowed researchers to explore the mechanisms underlying bodily aspects of self-consciousness which are largely attributed to the multisensory and sensorimotor processing of bodily signals (b ...

2022

Modulation of Bodily Self-Consciousness by Self and External Touch

Olaf Blanke, Masayuki Hara, Roy Salomon, Noriaki Kanayama

The full body illusion (FBI) is a bodily illusion based on the application of multisensory conflicts inducing changes in bodily self-consciousness (BSC), which has been used to study cognitive brain mechanisms underlying body ownership and related aspects ...

2021

Overcorrected Implants for Total Shoulder Arthroplasty

Yasmine Boulanaache

Glenohumeral osteoarthritis is a degenerative shoulder joint disease, which causes the breakdown of articular cartilage and bone. People affected by this disease suffer from severe pain and eventually reduced mobility and poor life quality. This disease is ...

EPFL2021

The various forms of sensorimotor plasticity following limb amputation and their link with rehabilitation strategies

Estelle Emeline Raffin

Limb amputation is characterized by complex and intermingled brain reorganization processes combining sensorimotor deprivation induced by the loss of the limb per se, and compensatory behaviors, such as the over-use of the intact or remaining limb. While a ...

2021