Affective Medicine

Abstract

2 SummaryBackground: Affective computing (AC) is concerned with emotional interactions performed with and through computers. It is defined as "computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions". AC enables investigation and understanding of the relation between human emotions and health as well as application of assistive and useful technologies in the medical domain. Objectives: 1) To review the general state of the art in AC and its applications in medicine, and 2) to establish synergies between the research communities of AC and medical informatics. Methods: Aspects related to the human affective state as a determinant of the human health are discussed, coupled with an illustration of significant AC research and related literature output. Moreover, affective communication channels are described and their range of application fields is explored through illustrative examples. Results: The presented conferences, European research projects and research publications illustrate the recent increase of interest in the AC area by the medical community. Tele-home healthcare, AmI, ubiquitous monitoring, e-learning and virtual communities with emotionally expressive characters for elderly or impaired people are few areas where the potential of AC has been realized and applications have emerged. Conclusions: A number of gaps can potentially be overcome through the synergy of AC and medical informatics. The application of AC technologies parallels the advancement of the existing state of the art and the introduction of new methods. The amount of work and projects reviewed in this paper witness an ambitious and optimistic synergetic future of the Affective Medicine field.

A Review on the Computational Methods for Emotional State Estimation from the Human EEG

“…Recently, affective computing (AC) has emerged as a converging technology blending emotion into human computer interaction (HCI) [6]. AC, often called emotion aware computing, builds emotional interactions between a human and a computer by measuring the emotional state through behavioral and physiological signals and developing computational models for the emotional state [6, 7].…”

Real‐Time EEG‐Based Happiness Detection System

“…Because most computers lack of understanding of user's emotions, sometimes they are unable to respond to the user's needs automatically and correctly [1]. One of the most interesting emotions is happiness.…”

“…However, it is easy to fake facial expressions or change tone of speech and these signals are not continuously available, and they differ from using physiological signals, which occur continuously and are hard to conceal, such as Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), Electrocardiogram (ECG), Skin Temperature (ST), and, especially, Electroencephalogram (EEG). EEG is the signal from voltage fluctuations in the brain, that is, the center of emotions [1, 4]. Emotions are thought to be related with activity in brain areas that direct our attention, motivate our behavior, and determine the significance of what is going on around us.…”

Recommendations for the design, implementation and evaluation of social support in online communities, networks, and groups

“…[13] The seminal studies of online support in informatics research typically focused only on a more narrow definition of emotional and informational support. [3,11,14] Researchers must target the types of support that occur in the online intervention, and this may be broader than what traditionally has been measured.…”