What Color is My Arm? Changes in Skin Color of an Embodied Virtual Arm Modulates Pain Threshold
Authors: Martini M, Perez-Marcos D, Sanchez-Vives MVIt has been demonstrated that visual inputs can modulate pain. However, the influence of skin color on pain perception is unknown. Red skin is associated to inflamed, hot and more sensitive skin, while blue is associated to cyanotic, cold skin. We aimed to test whether the color of the skin would alter the heat pain threshold. To this end, we used an immersive virtual environment where we induced embodiment of a virtual arm that was co-located with the real one and seen from a first-person perspective. Virtual reality allowed us to dynamically modify the color of the skin...
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Biofeedback & neurofeedback Research tools Telepresence virtual presence Virtual worlds Source Type: blogs
What Color Is Your Night Light? It May Affect Your Mood
When it comes to some of the health hazards of light at night, a new study suggests that the color of the light can make a big difference.Read full story on Science Daily (Source: Positive Technology Journal)
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Emotional computing Future interfaces Research tools Source Type: blogs
Phubbing: the war against anti-social phone use
Via Textually.orgDon't you just hate it when someone snubs you by looking at their phone instead of paying attention? The Stop Phubbing campaign group certainly does. The Guardian reports.In a list of "Disturbing Phubbing Stats" on their website, of note:-- If phubbing were a plague it would decimate six Chinas-- 97% of people claim their food tasted worse while being a victim of phubbing-- 92% of repeat phubbers go on to become politiciansSo it's really just a joke site? Well, a joke site with a serious message about our growing estrangement from our fellow human beings. But mostly a joke site, yes.Read full article. (Sou...
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Ethics of technology Source Type: blogs
The Computer Game That Helps Therapists Chat to Adolescents With Mental Health Problems
Via MIT Technology ReviewAdolescents with mental health problems are particularly hard for therapists to engage. But a new computer game is providing a healthy conduit for effective communication between them.Read the full story on MIT Technology Review (Source: Positive Technology Journal)
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Cybertherapy Telepresence & virtual presence Virtual worlds Source Type: blogs
OpenGlass Project Makes Google Glass Useful for the Visually Impaired
Re-blogged from MedgadgetGoogle Glass may have been developed to transform the way people see the world around them, but thanks to Dapper Vision’s OpenGlass Project, one doesn’t even need to be able to see to experience the Silicon Valley tech giant’s new spectacles.Harnessing the power of Google Glass’ built-in camera, the cloud, and the “hive-mind”, visually impaired users will be able to know what’s in front of them. The system consists of two components: Question-Answer sends pictures taken by the user and uploads them to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and Twitter for the public to help identify, and Mem...
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Augmented/mixed reality Crowsourcing Wearable & mobile Source Type: blogs
Pupil responses allow communication in locked-in syndrome patients
We report here that pupil size measured by a bedside camera can be used to communicate with patients with locked-in syndrome. With the same protocol we demonstrate command-following for a patient in a minimally conscious state, suggesting its potential as a diagnostic tool for patients whose state of consciousness is in question. Importantly, neither training nor individual adjustment of our system’s decoding parameters were required for successful decoding of patients’ responses.Paper full text PDFImage credit: Flickr user Beth77 (Source: Positive Technology Journal)
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Brain-computer interface Neurotechnology & neuroinformatics Source Type: blogs
German test of the controllability of motor imagery in older adults
Authors: Schott NAbstract. After a person is instructed to imagine a certain movement, no possibility exists to control whether the person is doing what they are asked for. The purpose of this study was to validate the German Test of the Controllability of Motor Imagery ("Tests zur Kontrollierbarkeit von Bewegungsvorstellungen" TKBV). A total sample of 102 men [mean 55.6, standard deviation (SD) 25.1] and 93 women (mean 59.2, SD 24.0) ranging in age from 18-88 years completed the TKBV. Two conditions were performed: a recognition (REC) and a regeneration (REG) test. In both conditions the participants had to...
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Mental practice & mental simulation Source Type: blogs
Detecting delay in visual feedback of an action as a monitor of self recognition
Authors: Hoover AE, Harris LRAbstract. How do we distinguish "self" from "other"? The correlation between willing an action and seeing it occur is an important cue. We exploited the fact that this correlation needs to occur within a restricted temporal window in order to obtain a quantitative assessment of when a body part is identified as "self". We measured the threshold and sensitivity (d') for detecting a delay between movements of the finger (of both the dominant and non-dominant hands) and visual feedback as seen from four visual perspectives (the natural view, and mirror-reversed and/or inverted views). Each trial c...
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Research tools Telepresence & virtual presence Source Type: blogs
First Google Glass use for real-time location of where multiple viewers are looking
(Source: Positive Technology Journal)
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Hive-mind solves tasks using Google Glass ant game
Re-blogged from New ScientistGlass could soon be used for more than just snapping pics of your lunchtime sandwich. A new game will connect Glass wearers to a virtual ant colony vying for prizes by solving real-world problems that vex traditional crowdsourcing efforts.Crowdsourcing is most famous for collaborative projects like Wikipedia and "games with a purpose" like FoldIt, which turns the calculations involved in protein folding into an online game. All require users to log in to a specific website on their PC.Now Daniel Estrada of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and Jonathan Lawhead of Columbia Universit...
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Augmented/mixed reality Creativity and computers Crowsourcing ICT and complexity Wearable & mobile Source Type: blogs
International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems
7-9 January 2014, Lisbon, Portugalhttp://www.phycs.org/Physiological data in its different dimensions, either bioelectrical, biomechanical, biochemical or biophysical, and collected through specialized biomedical devices, video and image capture or other sources, is opening new boundaries in the field of human-computer interaction into what can be defined as Physiological Computing. PhyCS is the annual meeting of the physiological interaction and computing community, and serves as the main international forum for engineers, computer scientists and health professionals, interested in outstanding research and development tha...
Source: Positive Technology Journal - August 7, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Biofeedback & neurofeedback Emotional computing Physiological Computing Positive Technology events Self-Tracking Source Type: blogs
How it feels (through Google Glass)
(Source: Positive Technology Journal)
Source: Positive Technology Journal - July 30, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Augmented/mixed reality Wearable & mobile Source Type: blogs
A mobile data collection platform for mental health research
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (2013), Volume 17, Issue 2, pp 241-251. A. Gaggioli, G. Pioggia, G. Tartarisco, G. Baldus, D. Corda, P. Cipresso, G. Riva Ubiquitous computing technologies offer exciting new possibilities for monitoring and analyzing user’s experience in real time. In this paper, we describe the design and development of Psychlog, a mobile phone platform designed to collect users’ psychological, physiological, and activity information for mental health research. The tool allows administering self-report questionnaires at specific times or randomly within a day. The system also permits to col...
Source: Positive Technology Journal - July 23, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Pervasive computing Research tools Self-Tracking Wearable & mobile Source Type: blogs
Augmented Reality - Projection Mapping
from Dane Luttik on Vimeo. (Source: Positive Technology Journal)
Source: Positive Technology Journal - July 23, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Augmented/mixed reality Blue sky Cyberart Source Type: blogs
The beginning of infinity
A little old video but still inspiring...THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY from Jason Silva on Vimeo. (Source: Positive Technology Journal)
Source: Positive Technology Journal - July 23, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: Blue sky Source Type: blogs
