Information can be scary, and even more so when we find ourselves humbled by its immensity. In a press release issued earlier this week, the European Commission has once again demonstrated that it is not afraid of big data. Quite the opposite, Europe is more than ever ready to embrace it – a gesture, which is reflected in Europe’s strong bet on research projects like CEEDs, which uses big data to enhance human cognition and improve problem solving.

In a previous post, we already discussed CEEDs and the eXperience Induction Machine (XIM), the heart of the project, located in the SPECS lab at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. The press release singles out CEEDs as an example of successful and highly promising big data research initiative.

Although XIM has so far mainly been applied to visualising brain (BrainX3) and historical (Bergen-Belsen reconstruction) data and will certainly bring about a huge qualitative change in how scientists work with tremendous amounts of information, the integration of this technology into more down-to-earth application fields seems imminent.

The press release reports that early interest in the XIM technology is already coming from several museums in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the United States, where it could potentially help with gathering and reacting to feedback from visitors. This naturally applies to many other public spaces such as shops, libraries and concerts. The CEEDs team is also conducting negotiations with several public, charity and commercial organisations to further extend the scope of application of the platform.

The CEEDs project coordinator Jonathan Freeman, Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London pointed out that “anywhere where there’s a wealth of data that either requires a lot of time or an incredible effort, there is potential.” In science, whole disciplines, from satellite imagery inspection to oil prospecting and astronomy, could benefit immensely from this novel approach to processing information.

With projects like CEEDs, Europe is working its way towards a new data-driven economy, a long-time goal, which the European Commission is now actively promoting across national governments. The European approach towards big data is perhaps best expressed in the words of the vice-president of the European Commission Neelie Kroes: “Big data doesn’t have to be scary. Projects like this enable us to take control of data and deal with it so we can get to solving problems. Leaders need to embrace big data.”

You can also read this article to learn about some other exciting big data projects backed by the European Commission.

Year by year, robots become better and better at negotiating each time more complex social interactions with humans. However, much as their social intelligence has improved, these interactions still suffer from a lack of transparency. In other words, unlike humans, robots are not capable of understanding and explaining their actions in intentional terms, which prevents them from having more effective communication with humans. To the joy of robots and humans alike, this challenge is now addressed by the What You Say Is What You Did (WYSIWYD) project, launched earlier this year.

The project, coordinated by the SPECS lab at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, will develop an autobiographical memory that can store data streams obtained by the robot in the form of a consistent personal narrative of the interaction history. Furthermore, the researchers intend to devise a mechanism of conversion of this memory data into meaningful linguistic structures that can be subsequently expressed in speech and communicative actions through a specific channel dubbed WYSIWYD Robotese, thus improving mutual understanding between robots and humans.

WYSIWYD is an interdisciplinary effort that will draw from the fields of robotics, cognitive science, psychology and computational neuroscience. The project largely builds on the previous success of the efAA project, also coordinated by SPECS. WYSIWYD is scheduled to run for 3 years, and hopefully will bring about a qualitative change in human robot interaction and cooperation as well as unlock new application areas in robotics.

The main research platform for the project is everybody’s favourite iCub robot, developed by the Italian Institute of Technology in Milan, which is also one of the universities participating in the collaboration. iCub will be used in combination with another amazing piece of technology Reactable, an interactive table interface.

iCub has recently celebrated its 10^th anniversary. Watch the video below to see how the robot and its capabilities evolved throughout a decade.

Wiring electronic devices directly into your brain may not sound like a very pleasant idea, but this is exactly what so many scientists around the world seem to be quite excited about. The reason is that, far from being your worst cyborg nightmare, brain implants – also called neuroprostheses – can do true miracles. Connected to the nervous system, these little chips can make the blind see, the deaf hear and even allow the paralysed to once again gain control over the physical world.

The principle is shared by most existing neuroprostheses. An external device captures sensory information no longer obtainable by biological means, converts it into a series of electrical signals interpretable by the brain and sends them to the implant, which in turn passes the information to the brain. That said, the implants can be either attached to some kind of nerve – like the optic or auditory – or directly to the required area of the cortex, in which case the signals can take a shortcut.

Argus II developed and commercialised by Second Sight is the only approved visual neuroprosthesis currently available on the market. The device is a retinal implant, designed to bypass the damaged biological eye photoreceptors in patients suffering from severe consequences of the condition known as retinitis pigmentosa. For now, the image reconstructed by Argus is only a low-resolution approximation of the real thing, but as technology continues to advance, the capacity of such implants can improve beyond imaginable.

The system follows the principle described above and consists of a video camera, a video processing unit (VPU), and the implant itself. Watch the animation below to see how it works.

While visual neuroprostheses are only beginning to gain impulse, nearly 300,000 people around the world already use brain implants to restore another sense, their hearing. Cochlear implant, the most widely used neuroprosthesis, is the only hope for thousands of people with an ear malfunction. Below is another video, which shows the reaction of a 2-year-old boy hearing his mother’s voice for the first time. For a detailed overview of how the implant works, watch this video.

Another application of neuroprosthetics promises to one day restore lost learning functions in humans. A study, published recently in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology by a group of researchers, led by the SPECS group at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, demonstrates how a chip implanted into the brain of a living rat can actually restore a disabled function of the cerebellum – the part of the brain heavily responsible for the acquisition of motor memories. Specifically, with its cerebellum anaesthetised, the rat was conditioned to the acquisition of an eye-blink response, thus successfully using the neuroprosthetic chip to regain a disabled learning function.

Today, brain implants are still in their infancy. However, this does not prevent scientists from envisioning implants that can give us perfect memory, night vision and instant thought access to information. There is a whole bunch of bioengineering obstacles that need to be addressed (HERE is one that has just been overcome) for brain implants to become safe and accepted in society, but our future already seems inevitably cybernetic.

Read this article to learn more about how neuroprosthetics will change the world.

Spacemaker VR is an Oculus-based virtual reality system that allows designers to walk through their designs
Source: Digital Physical

The physical spaces we inhabit have a direct influence on how we feel, think and behave. Understanding this implicit dialogue between built environments and our minds continues to open new ways for architects to design physical spaces that better meet people’s needs. Neuro-architecture, interactive architecture, intelligent environments and virtual reality technology are among those exciting and partially overlapping disciplines that are currently on the frontline of the ongoing architectural revolution.

Neuro-architecture

Where previously architects had to count on purely anecdotal and intuitive principles, neuro-architecture is now promising to provide a truly evidence-based neurobiological rationale for designing architectural spaces, be it your office, school or hospital. This is achieved thanks to a variety of techniques that allow researchers to quantify and measure human responses to different components that constitute a particular architectural environment, including by measuring the relevant regions of the brain.

Understanding the precise effects of each component on our mental and physical health is difficult to overestimate. Imagine being able to design classrooms whose very architectural configuration aids students’ concentration and improves learning or hospitals that accelerate patients’ recovery. The research can be carried out on existing buildings, models or in virtual reality simulations, before the actual structures are even built.

Virtual reality, in fact, can be extremely helpful when it comes to neuro-architecture research for several reasons. It allows to set up virtual environments where participants can navigate in life-like conditions, while at the same time researchers can have a systematic control of the introduced stimuli. Importantly, the response can be measured on different scales starting from an entire building to the scale of a room to a single architectural feature such as the height of the ceiling or the amount and quality of light allowed into the space. Some interesting research in this direction was conducted by the professor Eve Edelstein with the use of the virtual reality platform CAVE.

Those who think that the CAVE and other virtual reality rooms are not immersive enough, think, for instance, of the possibilities opened up by the much-talked-about Oculus headset. Contrary to virtual reality rooms, which are not easily accessible to everyone, virtual reality headsets are potentially available to every designer. Instead of fiddling around with physical prototypes, designers could now walk through their own creations and actually experience them. Spacemaker VR from Digital Physical is one example of how this technology can be used for the benefit of architects.

Read our previous post to learn about the eXperience Induction Machine, another exciting application of virtual reality.

Interactive architecture and intelligent environments:

The two terms are often interchangeable in many contexts, perhaps with a slightly more artistic connotation for the former and a more functional one for the latter. Whatever the difference between them, both are guided by the increasing penetration of computing into our daily lives to develop dynamic environments that can adapt their physical properties to the behaviour of the inhabitants. The ultimate goal, of course, is make people feel more at home and in harmony with their physical surroundings.

Many of the examples of interactive architecture are born from a mixture of artistic thinking and computational engineering. So far the researchers have been toying with some of the most fundamental parameters that are known to alter our state of mind. Unsurprisingly, light is one of the favorites when it comes to interactive architecture. Check out the two examples below, which include the Synthetic Oracle (former Hello Stranger) from the SPECS group at Pompeu Fabra University and BIOSTAGOG developed jointly by Platige Image and Bridge.

We live in a time when the scale of scientific research is undergoing an unprecedented exponential growth, which contributes to the generation of equally unprecedented amounts of data. Disciplines like neuroscience, astronomy or particle physics are piling up so much information that finding and implementing new ways of representing, navigating and manipulating this information is rapidly becoming a pressing necessity.

One specifically promising method relies on the use of virtual and mixed reality platforms. What could be more intuitive and useful for, say, a neuroscientist trying to make sense of a huge and seemingly chaotic brain data set than an ability to fly through its virtual gesture-controlled representation and actually experience the properties of data in search for meaningful patterns.

The eXperience Induction Machine (XIM), built in the SPECS lab at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, is one example of such immersive spaces, which is currently applied to work precisely with data collected from the human brain. XIM allows researchers to visualize a brain connectome, the network of nodes and connections that defines what is going on in our vital organ. XIM is now a key part of the Collective Experience of Emphatic Data Systems (CEEDs), a European project seeking to develop a whole set of tools to bring big data visualisation to a new level.

XIM can be hooked up to a series of sensors that measure such parameters as the user’s heart rate, skin conductance, eye gaze and brain activity. This allows the system to register certain subconscious patterns, associated with how we perceive and process information, and guide the user’s attention to areas of potential interest that would otherwise remain unnoticed. This feature, along with XIM’s increased interactivity, is what really makes XIM stand out in comparison with some other state-of-the-art virtual and mixed reality systems such as the AlloSphere at the California Nanosystems Institute or the CAVE2 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

Earlier this month, SPECS and CEEDs showcased their platform for embodied exploration of neural data at the 16^th edition of Laval Virtual, the largest virtual technology conference in Europe. You can see a complete photo report from the event HERE.

Visitors of all ages were invited to attend a number of  talks on subjects ranging from healthcare and educational robots to civil applications of drones and autonomous submarine vehicles. In addition, those interested could take part in a series of workshops, which encouraged people to learn about the practical side of robotics.

iCub playing pong with children

Another highlight of the Meeting was the national final of the VEX Robotics Competition, where several teams faced each other in an interactive game that motivated them to find creative solutions to complex engineering problems.

The biggest attraction of the event, however, was the exhibition area that allowed the visitors to get a glimpse of the future of the service robotics. Although modest in size, the exhibition featured some remarkable examples of robotic technology, mainly provided by local research institutions.

Teo robot from Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial

Adele Robots, for instance, showcased an adorable baby seal robot called Paro, which is already used for therapeutic purposes in hospitals and aged care facilities, where it helps personnel calm patients and improve their social behaviour. The exhibition also featured the iCub robot from the Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems group (SPECS) at Pompeu Fabra University. The robot received tons of deserved attention, especially from children. Teo, a 3D mapping robot from Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial, and Aisoy1, an educational robot from Aisoy Robotics, are just two other examples from this year’s exhibition.

What’s the relationship between living and artificial systems? How can we combine the two to form sophisticated solutions to challenges in science and engineering? The annual conference Living Machines puts these questions under the microscope.

Conference chairs Paul Verschure (Director of the Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems Group at Pompeu Fabra University) and Tony Prescott (Director of the Sheffield Centre for For Robotics, University of Sheffield ) hosted the 2013 events July, 29 – August, 2 at the Natural History Museum in London, a venue no less enchanting than last year’s edition which took place at Antonio Gaudi’s La Pedrera in Barcelona.

In addition to the workshops and the international roster of plenary speakers, this year’s conference featured a special exhibition on Living Machines at the London Science Museum.  Intelligent artifacts and biohybrid art made up the majority of installations displayed. Some of the stranger-than-fiction highlights included: a live musical performance featuring a humanoid robot; a robot model of ‘trace’ fossils from the dawn of life; music composed by a bio-inspired computer programme that mimics natural selection; plant-like robots that grow and change shape; wearable computing for finding your way in darkness and a robot that powers itself by digesting insects.

The fascinating exhibition complemented captivating talks on Natural and Artificial Selves by University of California Berkeley’s Tarrence Deacon; Biomimetics for medical devices by Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena from Imperial College London; the history of living machines by Andrew Pickering from the University of Exeter, and several others.

Stay tuned for the Convergent Science Network’s next edition of Living Machines, coming up in the summer of 2014! To read more about the 2013 event click HERE.

Running this year from September 2nd to September 13th, BCBT will provide students with the unique opportunity to attend lectures by prominent scientists in the fields of cognitive science and technology, as well participate in hands-on tutorials while working towards their own final project.

BCBT is organized and supported by the European project CSN (Convergent Science Network of Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems) and this year is also supported by Goal Leaders (biologically-constrained architectures for the next generation of adaptive robots). You can find out more about the previous editions of BCBT HERE.

Don’t miss your chance to sign up now — see you there!

A new way to get meaningful info from minute creatures

Although not known for its beauty or its brains, the common fruit fly has won the devotion of scientists around the world thanks to its many traits that make it an excellent research subject.

The Drosophila melanogaster is already well known for being used in genetics research – in fact, these little guys can even provide us with important insights into the brain mechanisms underlying cognitive processes like learning and memory.

It has become increasingly popular to study the fruit flies’ olfactory system. By manipulating the genes of these flies, we can learn more about how odors are perceived by the brain and even how they can influence behaviour.

However, this type of research can be tricky business.  Currently, olfactory driven fly
behavior is mostly investigated in mass experiments using  apparatus such as the T-maze, where large groups of flies are asked to choose between one odorant and a control. For a variety of validity issues, using this kind of methodology  often produces biased results while also leaving researchers short of finding the data they are really looking for.

To remedy these issues, researchers from The Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, in Germany; The Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute and The Sythetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems group (SPECS), University Pompeu Fabra, in Spain, have created a new model to study olfaction in the fruit fly…. While the latest fashions grab attention on the Catwalk, researchers working with fruit flies may start turning their heads towards the Flywalk!

The Flywalk consists fifteen small aligned wind tunnels where individual flies can be exposed to repeated odor pulses, well defined in concentration and timing. The flies’ positions can also be visually tracked, which allows quantification of the odor-evoked walking behavior with high temporal resolution.

By using the Flywalk, researchers were able to show that the flies’ behavior is odorant-specific; attractive odors elicited upwind movements, while repellent odors evoked downwind movements. Furthermore, researchers were able to demonstrate that these changes in behavior differ between sexes and that flies can evaluate the sex of others around them and males can even determine a female’s mating status based on olfactory cues.

If you’d like to find out more about this, you can access the full paper published in Nature.

The Spanish Society of Neuroscience, has declared 2012 Neuroscience Year in Spain. The year-long celebration serves as a way to bring neuroscience to the public and promote the dissemination of scientific knowledge ; a series of exhibitions, conferences, and a variety of other events have been taking place around the country throughout the year.

Here’s a taste of what was featured last month at the Fabra y Coats creation space in Barcelona, Spain– members of the Synthetic Perceptive Emotive and Cognitive Systems Lab (SPECS)  from Universitat Pompeu Fabra  displayed some of their latest innovations and talked about their recent work:

Trying out the RGS

Later on, Armin Duff talked about plasticity and the brain  followed by Belén Rubio Ballester who explained how the Rehabilitation Gaming System (RGS) is used with stroke patients.  Visitors were busy trying it out all day!

Interactive 3D brain imaging

The ¨emotion machine¨caught the eye of many passers by: Sylvain Legroux and Fabio Rotondi were present to help participants experience personalized multimedia through a multimodal system that can detect responses from physiological and behavioral measures while being linked to musical instruments and  a real-time graphics system called SMuSe composition.

Fotios Balampanis with a flying robot

Of course, few SPECS demos would be complete without robots! A chemical sensing robot roamed around the ground while a flying saucer-like bot took visitors by surprise as it hovered in mid air.

The evening session drew a large crowd, featuring talks by leading scientists in the field, Paul Verschure, director of the SPECS Lab at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra  and Robert Zatorre, director of the The Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Paul Vershure, director of the SPECS lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

The audience was given an idea of how long musical instruments have been a part of human culture when they were shown a collection of 35,000 year old flutes fashioned out of vulture bones.

Robert Zatorre discussed some of the effects that Music has on the human brain… does it act somewhat like a drug? And, why does it make us want to dance?  Paul Verschure then lead the audience to ponder the concept of creating music without instruments… music created directly through our brains.

To find out about more  activities and events related to the year of Neuroscience in Spain click HERE