The MindSee project aims to develop an information seeking application that exemplifies the fruitful symbiosis of modern Brain Computer Interface technology with real-world Human Computer Interaction. The result will be a cutting-edge information retrieval system that outperforms state-of-the-art tools by more than doubling the performance of information seeking in realistic tasks.
New research from Mindsee partners [Aalto University, the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) and the Centre of Excellence in Computational Inference (COIN)] reports that for the first time, information retrieval is possible with the help of EEG interpreted with machine learning. Or in other words, Mindsee reading minds!
http://cs.aalto.fi/en/current/news/2016-12-08-002/
We're happy to share news of a new Frontiers in Neuroscience article from Mindsee project partner Technical University of Berlin (link below opens in new window):
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2016.00530/full
Prof Benjamin Blankertz, PI on MINDSEE at TUB, said "We are pleased to announce a
new review paper about non-medical applications of BCI technology. Section 6 of the paper discusses MindSee HCI applications."
Padua, Italy, 29-30 September 2016
The Symbiotic workshop comes back to Padua this year after three successful editions in London, Helsinki and Berlin.
The workshop is the primary venue to presents scientific works dealing with the symbiotic relationships between humans and computers and to discuss the nature and implications of such relationship, including ethics. The idea of symbiotic systems put forward in this workshop capitalises on the computers’ ability to implicitly (even subliminally) detect the users goals and psycho-physiological states and thereby enhancing human-computer interaction (HCI) without subducting control from the human.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUBMIT A PAPER? The extended deadline for submission is June 15th 2016! Please visit http://symbiotic2016.org/ for more info on how to register or send an email to symbiotic2016@gmail.com. A best paper award will be granted to one of the works presented at the conference. The conference proceedings will be published by Springer in the Lecture Notes on Computer Science series.
In his two Intel blog articles (links provided below) the author, Bob Duffy, (2015, 2016) focuses on the shift from implicit to explicit computing that is happening in both the general computing area and in technology companies. This brief blog post emphasizes the growing interest for implicit systems, referred to here as “perceptual technologies”. Duffy points out that for decades, technology has worked on developing algorithms and tools to track precise input and information while humans were the ones doing the thinking and the perceiving. The shift is now towards creating machines capable of precise measurement but also to able to determine the relative state of a situation and use this information to trigger an action.
The posts then delve into the possibility of improving machine learning by allowing the computer to experience how we see the world. When interacting humans implicitly evaluate others’ behaviour to be able to understand their emotions and intentions.
For instance, we may observe the listener’s posture or eye gaze to infer how interested they are in the conversation, but how could this be implemented in machine learning?
Duffy provides a simple example to explain this concept such as the idea of having an interactive screen (fish tank) with a series of targets (fish) that will react to specific people’s actions. If the person is getting closer to the screen the fish will come closer to the surface but, if the individual gets too close the fish will retreat, additionally, if people pass too quickly in front of the screen the fish won’t appear. The implementation of these types of applications enable the machine learning process and will aid the computer in understanding how we see the world ultimately making the experience more intuitive and more human.
Duffy also pictures a future in which these implicit technologies will be embedded in many parts of our life. We all saw glimpses of this in movies such as Minority Report (2002) in which the main character enters a room and is targeted by personal advertising; and this notion is already not too far removed from our present daily reality.
We can also see it in our environment, it won’t be long until our devices (e.g., car) will be able to sense and identify both our presence and intent and then respond with a congruent action (e.g., parking). Technology is, literally, opening doors and differently from the past developers already have the tools to build these type of systems and the technologies at the base of this area of computing are the internet of things, perceptual technologies and cloud computing.
Since 2013 Mindsee has been working towards the goal of developing a system able to understand the implicit state of the user engaged in a scientific literature task; and Bob Duffy’s post show how relevant perceptual technologies have become and how important applications like Mindsee will be in the close future
Source:
The 7th MindSee Consortium meeting was held in London, UK on the 7th and 8th of January.
The meeting was organised by i2 media research at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Thank you all for participating!
The 4th International Workshop on Symbiotic Interaction was held in Berlin on the 7th and 8th of October 2015, chaired by Prof. Benjamin Blankertz (Technische Universität Berlin) and Prof. Giulio Jacucci (University of Helsinki), both partners in the MindSee project.
Since 2012, Symbiotic has been focusing on the symbiotic relationships between humans and computers as well as novel advancements therein. The idea of symbiotic systems put forward in this year's workshop capitalises on the computers’ ability to implicitly (even subliminally) detect the users goals and psycho-physiological states and thereby enhancing human-computer interaction (HCI) without subducting control from the human.
The workshop was opened with a tutorial of the software MIDAS, to provide a hands-on session in which participants were introduced to online analysis of psychophysiological signals. It continued with a Keynote speech by Fabio Babiloni on "Brain computer interfaces for the industrial application of cognitive neuroscience" and concluded with a rich poster session. On the second day, Professor Peter Desain opened the workshop with a Keynote speech titled "Broad Band Evoked Potentials, the advantage of a model-driven BCI" and continued with a number of talks from researchers of variuos institutions, closed by a panel discussion.
In line with the previous thrree events, the workshop aimed at promoting the exchange of scientific experiences in designing symbiotic systems, studying the way in which they affect human behaviour and defining the principles for a functional interdependence of humans and machines, with a special focus on physiological computing approaches, e.g. using brain-computer interface (BCI) technology.
All papers and posters accepted and showcased during the workshop (peer-reviewed) will be available in a proceeding published by Springer in Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
Given the growing relevance and interest gathered, it has been announced that the Symbiotic Workshop series will continue in 2016! See you all in Padova, Italy on September 29-30!
In this TED talk, infographics expert Manuel Lima explores the history of information visualisation. Since the beginning of times humans had the urge to rank, create an order and visualise information. Originally people used the metaphor of a tree to map family relationships, animal species or the realms of human knowledge. However knowledge cannot always be represented in such way: it is too complex, intricate and interdependent.
The metaphor that better represents knowledge is not a tree but a matrix, a network or a web. Hierarchy can show you the internal structure of an organisation, while a network is able to show the relationships and the connections between its members. Network visualisation is becoming a syntax of a new language and the same matrix model, such as the radial converge, can be use to represent the most disparate things: from DNA to Facebook networks.
Matrices and network seems to be able to embody the notion of decentralisation, non linearity, interconnectedness, interdependence and multiplicity. Manuel Lima believes that this way of thinking will help us solving a number o problems: from decoding the brain to understanding the universe.
Source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQZKs75RMqM&feature=em-uploademail
The 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) took place on August 25-29, 2015 in Milan, Italy. The conference covers many topics, from Biomedical Signal Processing to Neural and Rehabilitation Engineering, Biomechanics, from Robotics to Biosensors and Bio-Micro/Nano Technologies. The conference remarks the central role of BME in the improvement and innovation of health care (with a direct impact on the quality of life) but also focuses on how to reach and maintain a “wellness” through proper and advanced technologies, devices and protocols.
Three papers were accepted and presented at the conference, resulting from work conducted by MindSee partners at Technische Universität Berlin.
Papers:
The full program and papers are available here http://emb.citengine.com/event/embc-2015/details.
MindSee related work was presented this August (9th - 13th) at the 38th International ACM SIGIR Conference in Santiago, Chile. SIGIR 2015 is a perfect theatre for Mindsee as it is a major international forum for the presentation of new research results and for the demonstration of new systems and techniques in Information Retrieval.
Mindsee partners at Aalto University presented their work at the main conference on Tuesday the 11th (SciNet: Interactive intent modeling for information discovery) as well as the at the conference's workshop (NeuroIR), focusing on Neuro-Physiological Methods in Information Retrieval Research. A paper (Predicting relevance of text from neuro-physiology ) as well as a demo session were delivered.
As your eyes scan these words, your brain seems to derive their meaning instantaneously. How are we able to recognize and interpret marks on a page so rapidly? A small new study confirms that a specialized brain area recognizes printed words as pictures rather than by their meaning.
Researchers led by neuroscientist Maximilian Riesenhuber of Georgetown University Medical Center scanned the brains of 12 subjects with functional MRI. They focused on a tiny area of the brain known to be involved in recognizing words, the visual word form area (VWFA), found on the surface of the brain, behind the left ear. The VWFA's right hemisphere analogue is the fusiform face area, which allows us to recognize faces. In young children and people who are illiterate, the VWFA region and the fusiform face area both respond to faces. As people learn to read, the VWFA region is co-opted for word recognition.
Read MoreThe next consortium meeting will see all partners from the MindSee project gathering in the town of Helsinki for a 2 day meeting on June 15th and 16th, 2015. Pia Erkinheimo from Digile, will join the Exploitation and Innovation session that the consortium has organised for day 2, as an external expert and moderator to help the MindSee project with appropriate planning.
See you all in Helsinki!
Read MoreA recent article by I. Genuth (The Institution of Engineering and Technology ) reports quite an interesting summary of how electroencephalography (EEG) has developed through the years, and of how it is now advancing rapidly into the consumer market. There seems to be an agreement among experts that in the near future the industry will not only grow in size, but will also see a huge expansion in the capabilities and uses of the technology.
"Since its development in the first half of the 20th century, EEG greatly contributed to the advancement of neuroscience as well as to everyday neurological practice. It is used to: diagnose epilepsy for seizure prediction; develop biomarkers for a spectrum of brain disorders including Alzheimer's and depression; and diagnose sleep disorders, coma and even brain death. Now this unique and powerful technology is on its way to the consumer market.
There are several manufacturers of consumer EEG, and they have different approaches in bringing brain-computer interfaces to the general public and a different vision for the use of the technology.
Read More