Affective computing in the era of contemporary neurophysiology and health informatics

Abstract

This commentary is a response 93]. Its aim is to discuss the role that neurophysiological measurements, such as EEG and MEG, may play in affective computing. The discussion is drawn upon the light of current experience and practice, as well as, advances envisaged in the fields of health informatics, telecommunications and biomedical engineering. It is explained why HCI research into interface evaluation and affective computing may be greatly enhanced by exploiting the underlying information of neurophysiological recordings. q

From doing to being: getting closer to the user experience

“…Badmis, Papadelis et al (2004), in this series of commentaries, point out that changes in these signals can only be "secondary effects of any changes induced." As an alternative, they recommend that neurophysiological correlates such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) or magnetoencephalogram (MEG) be used to obtain more direct measurements as they ''record outputs of neuronal regions which occur at real reaction time and are in turn responsible for changing local blood flow and, therefore GSR and BVP''.…”

An MEG compatible system for measuring skin conductance responses

“…The principal goal of this collaboration was the design and implementation of a cheap and accurate measure of SCR that can be used both in studies with expensive state of the art MEG and fMRI equipment and in studies with simpler instrumentation, notably few-channel EEG. The system is therefore ideal for studies of affect and emotion, serves the growing battery of neurophysiological measurements required and the human-computer interaction that may accompany it (Bamidis et al, 2004). It is also ideal for measurements with children and patients under stressful tests where subtle features of the EEG response (Ioannides and Sargsyan, 2012) must be studied together with indices of arousal and anxiety levels.…”

Description and future trends of ICT solutions offered towards independent living

“…Except from the early recognition of sudden physical declines, smart elderly healthcare systems should also deal with the changes in the user's cognitive state as revealed by behavioral and emotional deviations. Therefore, except from the aforementioned solutions derived from the health informatics field, the technological systems which interact with the senior citizens should be envisaged with affective computing techniques that collect and process neurophysiological measurements [8]. Moreover, recent technological improvements facilitate such applications through the use of wearable and miniaturized sensors [9], which may be adopted for the continuous collection in a minimally obtrusive way of various physiological and ambient data in a variety of conditions.…”