Three Dimensional Vestibular Ocular Reflex Testing Using a Six Degrees of Freedom Motion Platform

The vestibular organ is a sensor that measures angular and linear accelerations with six degrees of freedom (6DF). Complete or partial defects in the vestibular organ results in mild to severe equilibrium problems, such as vertigo, dizziness, oscillopsia, gait unsteadiness nausea and/or vomiting. A good and frequently used measure to quantify...

Audio-tactile stimulation: A tool to improve health and well-being?

Stimulation of the tactile sense or the hearing sense can be used to improve a person's health and well-being. For example, to make someone relax, feel better or sleep better. In this position paper, we present the concept of auditory-tactile stimulation for health and well-being. Through carefully selected audio-tactile stimuli a person's...

Effortless Passive BCIs for Healthy Users

While a BCI usually aims to provide an alternative communication channel for disabled users who have difficulties to move or to speak, we focused on BCIs as a way to retrieve and use information about an individual’s cognitive or affective state without requiring any effort or intention of the user to convey this information. Providing only an...

The perception of verticality in lunar and Martian gravity conditions

Although the mechanisms of neural adaptation to weightlessness and re-adaptation to Earth-gravity have received a lot of attention since the first human space flight, there is as yet little knowledge about how spatial orientation is affected by partial gravity, such as lunar gravity of 0.16. g or Martian gravity of 0.38. g. Up to now twelve...

Help, I need some body - The effect of embodiment on playful learning

Children with a chronic disease like diabetes need to learn how to self manage their disease. Knowledge about their condition is indispensable to reach this goal. Within the European project ALIZ-E a robot companion is being developed that should, among others attributes, have the capability to educate children. In this paper, a virtual agent on...

Exploring the use of feedback in ERP-based BCI

Giving direct feedback on a mental state is common practice in motor imagery based brain-computer interfaces (BCI), but has not been reported for those based on eventrelated potentials (ERP). Potentially, such feedback could allow the user to adjust his strategy during a running trial to obtain the required response. In order to test the...

A visual display enhancing comfort by counteracting airsickness

A simulator study has been conducted demonstrating a positive effect on airsickness by utilizing a 3D artificial Earth-fixed visual pattern. Participants were exposed to the same turbulent physical aircraft motion in a simulator three times in a row, each time using a different visual cue. In one condition only the interior of the simulator...

Self-reported and measured weight, height and body mass index (BMI) in Italy, the Netherlands and North America

Background: Self-reported values of height and weight are used increasingly despite warnings that these data - and derived body mass index (BMI) values - might be biased. The present study investigates whether differences between self-reported and measured values are the same for populations from different regions, and the influences of gender...

Nuancing the relationship between motion sickness and postural stability

The most cited theory on motion sickness is the conflict theory by Reason and Brand (1975) [1], stating that motion sickness occurs due to a conflict between the senses and stored patterns of motion. In addition, there seems to be evidence for another theory stating that postural instability is a necessary and sufficient condition preceding...

Visual image safety

Human communication of emotion via sweat: How specific is it? (abstract)

Females evaluate ambiguous facial expression – morphed between happy and fearful – faces as more fearful when exposed to fear sweat as compared to control odor (Zhou & Chen, 2009). We investigated the specificity of this effect, i.e. whether processing of fearful faces is affected specifically by fear sweat. In Study 1, we investigated the...

Personalized and contextualized information in self-management systems for chronically ill patients (PERISCOPE)

Motivation - It is becoming necessary to seriously consider self-management in the treatment of chronically ill patients. A number of self-management applications have already been developed, but an explicit theoretical model is lacking. The PERISCOPE-project aims to provide (1) a conceptual framework for self-management systems aimed at...

Cognitive engineering for technology in mental health care and rehabilitation

The use of technology, such as virtual reality, electronic diaries, multimedia, brain computing and computer games, to support the care and rehabilitation of patients affected by mental disorders is a relatively new and advancing research area. In this workshop, researchers, developers and mental health professionals will present and discuss...

Stress-reducing effects from orange odor exposure in humans in an experimental setting