Publications related to Virtual reality improves embodiment and neuropathic pain caused by spinal cord injury

Immersive VR for upper-extremity rehabilitation in patients with neurological disorders: a scoping review

Background Neurological disorders, such as stroke and chronic pain syndromes, profoundly impact independence and quality of life, especially when affecting upper extremity (UE) function. While conventional physical therapy has shown effectiveness in provid ...

BioMed Central2024

Customizing the human-avatar mapping based on EEG error related potentials during avatar-based interaction

Ronan Boulic, Ricardo Andres Chavarriaga Lozano, Bruno Herbelin, José del Rocio Millán Ruiz, Olaf Blanke, Fumiaki Iwane, Thibault Serge Mario Porssut

Objective. A key challenge of virtual reality (VR) applications is to maintain a reliable human-avatar mapping. Users may lose the sense of controlling (sense of agency), owning (sense of body ownership), or being located (sense of self-location) inside th ...

2024

Modulation of Visually Induced Self-motion Illusions by α Transcranial Electric Stimulation over the Superior Parietal Cortex

Sylvain Jean-François Harquel

The growing popularity of virtual reality systems has led to a renewed interest in understanding the neurophysiological correlates of the illusion of self-motion (vection), a phenomenon that can be both intentionally induced or avoided in such systems, dep ...

Mit Press2024

An immersive virtual reality tool for assessing left and right unilateral spatial neglect

Olaf Blanke, Andrea Serino, Roberta Ronchi

The reported rate of the occurrence of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is highly variable likely due to the lack of validity and low sensitivity of classical tools used to assess it. Virtual reality (VR) assessments try to overcome these limitations by pr ...

Wiley2024

Generalization and Personalization of Machine Learning for Multimodal Mobile Sensing in Everyday Life

Lakmal Buddika Meegahapola

A range of behavioral and contextual factors, including eating and drinking behavior, mood, social context, and other daily activities, can significantly impact an individual's quality of life and overall well-being. Therefore, inferring everyday life aspe ...

EPFL2024

Changes in spatial self-consciousness elicit grid cell–like representation in the entorhinal cortex

Olaf Blanke, Hyeongdong Park, Hyukjun Moon, Baptiste Gauthier, Emanuela De Falco, Louis Philippe Albert, Corentin Marie Hervé Robert Tasu

Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex (EC) encode an individual’s location in space, integrating both environmental and multisensory bodily cues. Notably, body-derived signals are also primary signals for the sense of self. While studies have demonstrated th ...

2024

In case of doubt, one follows one's self: the implicit guidance of the embodied self-avatar

Ronan Boulic, Bruno Herbelin, Loën Boban

The sense of embodiment in virtual reality (VR) is commonly understood as the subjective experience that one's physical body is substituted by a virtual counterpart, and is typically achieved when the avatar's body, seen from a first-person view, moves lik ...

2024

'connEcted caesarean section': creating a virtual link between MOthers and their infanTs to ImprOve maternal childbirth experieNce - study protocol for a PILOT trial (e-motion-pilot)

Sandra Maria Marcadent, Karine Lepigeon, Fiona Corbaz, David Desseauve

IntroductionOne-third of mothers rate their childbirth as traumatic. The prevalence of childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder (CB-PTSD) is 4.7%. Skin-to-skin contact is a protective factor against CB-PTSD. However, during a caesarean section (CS ...

BMJ PUBLISHING GROUP2023

A Stand-Alone Augmented Reality Intervention for Chronic Pain using Embodied Systolic Stimulation

Skander Mensi, Sylvain Cardin, Oliver Alan Kannape, Robert Leeb, Fabien Bourban, Alexis Dorier, Andrea Serino

Chronic pain presents a tremendous personal, societal, and financial burden. Treatment options are often limited to managing symptoms as opposed to treating the causes, and the consequences of pharmacological treatments can be immensely harmful as evidence ...

IEEE2023

Updates on moleculARweb, the Swiss Portal for Chemistry and Structural Biology Education Using Augmented and now also Virtual Reality

Luciano Andres Abriata, Fabio Jose Cortes Rodriguez

We present a new activity on the moleculARweb plat-form on molecular symmetry elements, two more languages, a new marker-less augmented reality mode, and a new virtual reality tool for VR headsets. ...

SWISS CHEMICAL SOC2023

Saliency prediction in 360° architectural scenes: Performance and impact of daylight variations

Marilyne Andersen, Sabine Süsstrunk, Kynthia Chamilothori, Bahar Aydemir, Caroline Karmann, Seungryong Kim

Saliency models are image-based prediction models that estimate human visual attention. Such models, when applied to architectural spaces, could pave the way for design decisions where visual attention is taken into account. In this study, we tested the pe ...

2023

An immersive virtual reality system for ecological assessment of peripersonal and extrapersonal unilateral spatial neglect

Ravi Tej Sai Giridhar Tadi, Olaf Blanke, Andrea Serino, Roberta Ronchi

BackgroundUnilateral spatial neglect (USN) is a debilitating neuropsychological syndrome that often follows brain injury, in particular a stroke affecting the right hemisphere. In current clinical practice, the assessment of neglect is based on old-fashion ...

BioMed Central2023

Systematic design of a multi-input multi-output controller by model-based decoupling: a demonstration on TCV using multi-species gas injection

Basil Duval, Christian Gabriel Theiler, Cristian Galperti, Artur Perek

In this paper, we present the first results of a systematically designed multi-input multi-output gas-injection controller on Tokamak a Configuration Variable (TCV). We demonstrate the simultaneous real-time control of the NII emission front position and l ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2023

Towards a Framework for Estimation of User Susceptibility to Cybersickness

Nana Tian

Cybersickness still poses a significant challenge to the widespread usage of virtual reality (VR), leading to different levels of discomfort and potentially breaking the immersive experience. Researchers have attempted to discover the possible fundamental ...

EPFL2023

Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making

Davide Scaramuzza, Christian Pfeiffer, Leyla Loued-Khenissi

Does gravity affect decision-making? This question comes into sharp focus as plans for interplanetary human space missions solidify. In the framework of Bayesian brain theories, gravity encapsulates a strong prior, anchoring agents to a reference frame via ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Out-of-body illusion induced by visual-vestibular stimulation

Bruno Herbelin, Olaf Blanke, Florian Lance, Sophie Jacqueline Andrée Betka, Hsin-Ping Wu, Estelle Nakul

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are characterized by the subjective feeling of being located outside one's physical body and perceiving one's own body from an elevated perspective looking downwards. OBEs have been correlated with abnormal integration of bod ...

Cell Press2023

Effects of Head-Tracking Artefacts on Externalization and Localization in Azimuth With Binaural Wearable Devices

Hervé Lissek, Gilles André Courtois, Vincent Pierre Olivier Grimaldi

Head tracking combined with head movements have been shown to improve auditory externalization of a virtual sound source and contribute to the performance in localization. With certain technically constrained head-tracking algorithms, as can be found in we ...

Audio Engineering Soc2023

Stronger serial dependence in the depth plane than the fronto-parallel plane between realistic objects: Evidence from virtual reality

David Pascucci

Visual estimates of stimulus features are systematically biased toward the features of previously encountered stimuli. Such serial dependencies have often been linked to how the brain maintains perceptual continuity. However, serial dependence has mostly b ...

2023

Prefrontal engrams of long-term fear memory perpetuate pain perception

Johannes Gräff, Yechao Han

A painful episode can lead to a life-long increase in an individual's experience of pain. Fearful anticipation of imminent pain could play a role in this phenomenon, but the neurobiological underpinnings are unclear because fear can both suppress and enhan ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

From finger animation to full-body embodiment of avatars with different morphologies and proportions

Mathias Guy Delahaye

VR (Virtual Reality) is a real-time simulation that creates the subjective illusion of being in a virtual world. This thesis explores how integrating the user's body and fingers can be achieved and beneficial for the user to experience VR. At the advent of ...

EPFL2023