Publications related to Simulating interactions with virtual characters for the treatment of social phobia

Immersive VR for upper-extremity rehabilitation in patients with neurological disorders: a scoping review

Background Neurological disorders, such as stroke and chronic pain syndromes, profoundly impact independence and quality of life, especially when affecting upper extremity (UE) function. While conventional physical therapy has shown effectiveness in provid ...

BioMed Central2024

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

Involvement of prelimbic cortex neurons and related circuits in the acquisition of a cooperative learning by pairs of rats

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Elias Georges Gebara, Ana del Rocio Conde Moro

Social behaviors such as cooperation are crucial for mammals. A deeper knowledge of the neuronal mechanisms underlying cooperation can be beneficial for people suffering from pathologies with impaired social behavior. Our aim was to study the brain activit ...

Springer2024

Seeking the new, learning from the unexpected: Computational models of surprise and novelty in the brain

Alireza Modirshanechi

Human babies have a natural desire to interact with new toys and objects, through which they learn how the world around them works, e.g., that glass shatters when dropped, but a rubber ball does not. When their predictions are proven incorrect, such as whe ...

EPFL2024

An immersive virtual reality tool for assessing left and right unilateral spatial neglect

Olaf Blanke, Andrea Serino, Roberta Ronchi

The reported rate of the occurrence of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is highly variable likely due to the lack of validity and low sensitivity of classical tools used to assess it. Virtual reality (VR) assessments try to overcome these limitations by pr ...

Wiley2024

Functional MRI Neurofeedback Outperforms Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Reducing Tinnitus Distress: A Prospective Randomized Clinical Trial

Dimitri Nestor Alice Van De Ville, Nicolas Gninenko

Background: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the current standard treatment for chronic severe tinnitus; however, preliminary evidence suggests that real-time functional MRI (fMRI) neurofeedback therapy may be more effective. Purpose: To compare the e ...

Radiological Soc North America (Rsna)2024

Generalization and Personalization of Machine Learning for Multimodal Mobile Sensing in Everyday Life

Lakmal Buddika Meegahapola

A range of behavioral and contextual factors, including eating and drinking behavior, mood, social context, and other daily activities, can significantly impact an individual's quality of life and overall well-being. Therefore, inferring everyday life aspe ...

EPFL2024

QCD worldsheet axion from the bootstrap

Andrea Guerrieri, Victor Gorbenko

The worldsheet axion plays a crucial role in the dynamics of the Yang-Mills confining flux tubes. According to the lattice measurements, its mass is of order the string tension and its coupling is close to a certain critical value. Using the S-matrix Boots ...

Springer Nature2024

An immersive virtual reality system for ecological assessment of peripersonal and extrapersonal unilateral spatial neglect

Ravi Tej Sai Giridhar Tadi, Olaf Blanke, Andrea Serino, Roberta Ronchi

BackgroundUnilateral spatial neglect (USN) is a debilitating neuropsychological syndrome that often follows brain injury, in particular a stroke affecting the right hemisphere. In current clinical practice, the assessment of neglect is based on old-fashion ...

BioMed Central2023

'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

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

Social isolation shortens lifespan through oxidative stress in ants

Alessandro Crespi, Laurent Keller

Social isolation negatively affects health, induces detrimental behaviors, and shortens lifespan in social species. Little is known about the mechanisms underpinning these effects because model species are typically short-lived and non-social. Using coloni ...

Nature Research2023

Effects of Head-Tracking Artefacts on Externalization and Localization in Azimuth With Binaural Wearable Devices

Hervé Lissek, Gilles André Courtois, Vincent Pierre Olivier Grimaldi

Head tracking combined with head movements have been shown to improve auditory externalization of a virtual sound source and contribute to the performance in localization. With certain technically constrained head-tracking algorithms, as can be found in we ...

Audio Engineering Soc2023

Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making

Davide Scaramuzza, Christian Pfeiffer, Leyla Loued-Khenissi

Does gravity affect decision-making? This question comes into sharp focus as plans for interplanetary human space missions solidify. In the framework of Bayesian brain theories, gravity encapsulates a strong prior, anchoring agents to a reference frame via ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Non-verbal Communication between Humans and Robots: Imitation, Mutual Understanding and Inferring Object Properties

Nuno Ricardo Ferreira Duarte

Humans can express their actions and intentions, resorting to verbal and/or non-verbal communication. In verbal communication, humans use language to express, in structured linguistic terms, the desired action they wish to perform. Non-verbal communication ...

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

Transcriptomic analysis reveals mitochondrial pathways associated with distinct adolescent behavioral phenotypes and stress response

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Dogukan Hazar Ülgen, Thamyris Silva

Adolescent individuals exhibit great variability in cortical dynamics and behavioral outcomes. The developing adolescent brain is highly sensitive to social experiences and environmental insults, influencing how personality traits emerge. A distinct patter ...

2023

Behavioral outcome of very preterm children at 5 years of age: Prognostic utility of brain tissue volumes at term-equivalent-age, perinatal, and environmental factors

Djalel Eddine Meskaldji, Laura Ioana Gui, Serafeim Loukas

ObjectivePrematurity is associated with a high risk of long-term behavioral problems. This study aimed to assess the prognostic utility of volumetric brain data at term-equivalent-age (TEA), clinical perinatal factors, and parental social economic risk in ...

WILEY2023

Human Interactive Robotic Surfaces for Physical Immersion

Fabio Zuliani

Computers have long been augmenting human capabilities and communication, and with emerging technologies, physical immersion in virtual worlds is now attainable. These advancements push the boundaries of human potential, allowing designers, architects, eng ...

EPFL2023

Mitofusin-2 in nucleus accumbens D2-MSNs regulates social dominance and neuronal function

Bernard Schneider, Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Elias Georges Gebara, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Simone Astori, Sriparna Ghosal, Eva Ramos Fernandez, Alessandro Chioino

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a brain hub regulating motivated behaviors, including social competitiveness. Mitochondrial function in the NAc links anxiety with social competitiveness, and the mitochondrial fusion protein mitofusin 2 (Mfn2) in NAc neurons ...

2023