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Miriam Reiner

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My work uses Ai and brain-eye correlates to extract mental states from eye dynamics from distance. Once the mental states are identified my results show that specific sensory stimuli act on the brain to change the captured state such as reduction of mental load, fatigue and more. I have applied some of the above results to a startup, that was acquired, and recently started a second startup within the same domain, with advanced technologies in the above domain. I am eager for collaborations....

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Papers by Miriam Reiner

Evidence for deficient motor planning in ADHD

Scientific Reports, 2017

We compare motor planning mechanisms of ADHD and control subjects based on their effect on later ... more We compare motor planning mechanisms of ADHD and control subjects based on their effect on later observed kinematic characteristics. We monitor hand movement following planning conditions that differ in preparation time, and evaluate the differences across conditions and participants with/without ADHD. Our findings show that when there is sufficient planning time, people without ADHD seem to have a motor plan ready, and immediately initiate a planned movement after a 'GO' cue, with a bell shaped velocity profile. When planning time is not sufficient, they start the movement in a delayed time, possibly indicating that they needed to complete a movement plan. However, people with ADHD, did not start movement immediately after the cue, even when provided with a long preparation time, possibly indicating that even for this planning interval they did not have a motion plan ready. The movement was not only delayed, its velocity profile was not bell shaped and had several peaks. We further found differences between control and ADHD participants in the velocity profile, variability and jitter of movements. Our results suggest that ADHD motion characteristics, are associated with an immature motor plan. Based on the results we propose a paradigm to evaluate deficiencies in motor planning.

3D faces are recognized more accurately and faster than 2D faces, but with similar inversion effects

Vision Research, Sep 1, 2017

Recognition of faces typically occurs via holistic processing where individual features are combi... more Recognition of faces typically occurs via holistic processing where individual features are combined to provide an overall facial representation. However, when faces are inverted, there is greater reliance on featural processing where faces are recognized based on their individual features. These findings are based on a substantial number of studies using 2-dimensional (2D) faces and it is unknown whether these results can be extended to 3-dimensional (3D) faces, which have more depth information that is absent in the typical 2D stimuli used in face recognition literature. Using the face inversion paradigm, the current study investigated how holistic and featural processing are differentially influenced by 2D and 3D faces. Twenty-five participants completed a delayed face-matching task consisting of upright and inverted faces that were presented as both 2D and 3D stereoscopic images. Recognition accuracy was significantly higher for 3D upright faces compared to 2D upright faces, providing support that the enriched visual information in 3D stereoscopic images facilitates holistic processing that is essential for the recognition of upright faces. Typical face inversion effects were also obtained, regardless of whether the faces were presented in 2D or 3D. Moreover, recognition performances for 2D inverted and 3D inverted faces did not differ. Taken together, these results demonstrated that 3D stereoscopic effects influence face recognition during holistic processing but not during featural processing. Our findings therefore provide a novel perspective that furthers our understanding of face recognition mechanisms, shedding light on how the integration of stereoscopic information in 3D faces influences face recognition processes.

Reduced mental load in learning a motor visual task with virtual 3D method

Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Nov 27, 2017

Distance learning is expanding rapidly, fueled by the novel technologies for shared recorded teac... more Distance learning is expanding rapidly, fueled by the novel technologies for shared recorded teaching sessions on the Web. Here, we ask whether 3D stereoscopic (3DS) virtual learning environment teaching sessions are more compelling than typical two-dimensional (2D) video sessions and whether this type of teaching results in superior learning. The research goal was to compare learning in 2 virtual learning scenarios-on 2D displays and with an identical 3DS scenario. Participants watched a 2D or 3DS video of an instructor demonstrating a box origami paper-folding task. We compared participants' folding test scores and self-assessment questionnaires of the teaching scenarios and calculated their cognitive load index (CLI) based on electroencephalogram measurements during the observation periods. Results showed a highly significant difference between participants' folding test scores, CLI, and self-assessment questionnaire results in 2D compared to 3DS sessions. Our findings indicate that employing stereoscopic 3D technology over 2D displays in the design of emerging virtual and augmented reality applications in distance learning has advantages.

Imagery of motor actions: effects of kinaesthetic versus visual-motor mode of imagery on single-trial EEG

The EMPATHIC Project: Building an Expressive, Advanced Virtual Coach to Improve Independent Healthy-Life-Years of the Elderly

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Feb 1, 2018

This paper outlines the EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project, which aims to research, innovate,... more This paper outlines the EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project, which aims to research, innovate, explore and validate new interaction paradigms and platforms for future generations of Personalized Virtual Coaches to assist elderly people living independently at and around their home. Innovative multimodal face analytics, adaptive spoken dialogue systems, and natural language interfaces are part of what the project investigates and innovates, aiming to help dependent aging persons and their carers. It will uses remote, non-intrusive technologies to extract physiological markers of emotional states and adapt respective coach responses. In doing so, it aims to develop causal models for emotionally believable coach-user interactions, which shall engage elders and thus keep off loneliness, sustain health, enhance quality of life, and simplify access to future telecare services. Through measurable end-user validations performed in Spain, Norway and France (and complementary user evaluations in Italy), the proposed methods and solutions will have to demonstrate usefulness, reliability, flexibility and robustness.

The EMPATHIC Project: Building an Expressive, Advanced Virtual Coach to Improve Independent Healthy-Life-Years of the Elderly

ArXiv, 2021

This paper outlines the EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project, which aims to research, innovate,... more This paper outlines the EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project, which aims to research, innovate, explore and validate new interaction paradigms and platforms for future generations of Personalized Virtual Coaches to assist elderly people living independently at and around their home. Innovative multimodial face analytics, adaptive spoken dialogue systems, and natural language interfaces are part of what the project investigates and innovates, aiming to help dependent aging persons and their carers. It will use remote, non-intrusive technologies to extract physiological markers of emotional states and adapt respective coach responses. In doing so, it aims to develop causal models for emotionally believable coach-user interactions, which shall engage elders and thus keep off loneliness, sustain health, enhance quality of life, and simplify access to future telecare services. Through measurable end-user validations performed in Spain, Norway and France (and complementary user evaluati...

EMPATHIC, Expressive, Advanced Virtual Coach to Improve Independent Healthy-Life-Years of the Elderdy

The EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project will research, innovate, explore and validate new para... more The EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project will research, innovate, explore and validate new paradigms and platforms, laying the foundation for future generations of Personalised Virtual Coaches to assist elderly people living independently at and around their home. Innovative multimodal face analytics, adaptive spoken dialogue systems and natural language interfaces are part of what the project will research and innovate, in order to help dependent aging persons and their carers. The project will use remote non-intrusive technologies to extract physiological markers of emotional states in real-time for online adaptive responses of the coach, and advance holistic modelling of behavioural, computational, physical and social aspects of a personalised expressive virtual coach. It will develop causal models of coach-user interactional exchanges that engage elders in emotionally believable interactions keeping off loneliness, sustaining health status, enhancing quality of life and simpli...

Abstracts of the 16th Annual Meeting of The Israel Society for Neuroscience: Eilat, Israel, November 25–27, 2007

Neural Plasticity, 2007

The Israel Society for Neuroscience—ISFN—was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scient... more The Israel Society for Neuroscience—ISFN—was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scientists conducting research in the area of neurobiology. The primary goal of the society was to promote and disseminate the knowledge and understanding acquired by its members, and to strengthen interactions between them. Since then, the society holds its annual meeting every year in Eilat usually during December. At this annual meetings, the senior Israeli neurobiologists, their teams, and their graduate students, as well as foreign scientists and students, present their recent research findings in platform and poster presentations, and the program of the meeting is mainly based on the 338 received abstracts which are published in this volume. The meeting also offers the opportunity for the researchers to exchange information with each other, often leading to the initiation of collaborative studies. Both the number of members of the society and those participating in the annual meeting is ...

Effects of Order and Sensory Modality in Stiffness Perception

Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, Aug 1, 2012

The stiffness properties of an environment are perceived during active manual manipulation primar... more The stiffness properties of an environment are perceived during active manual manipulation primarily by processing force cues and position-based tactile, kinesthetic, and visual information. Using a two alternative forced choice (2AFC) stiffness discrimination task, we tested how the perceiver integrates stiffness-related information based on sensory feedback from one or two modalities and the origins of within-session shifts in stiffness discrimination ability. Two factors were investigated: practice and the amount of available sensory information. Subjects discriminated between the stiffness of two targets that were presented either haptically or visuohaptically in two subsequent blocks. Our results show that prior experience in a unisensory haptic stiffness discrimination block greatly improved performance when visual feedback was subsequently provided along with haptic feedback. This improvement could not be attributed to effects induced by practice or multisensory stimulus presentation. Our findings suggest that optimization integration theories of multisensory perception need to account for past sensory experience that may affect current perception of the task even within a single session.

Author Correction: Evidence for deficient motor planning in ADHD

Scientific Reports, 2018

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of t... more

Thought experiments in science education: potential and current realization

International Journal of Science Education, 2000

Thought Experiments (TEs) have a long history of use in science. It is suggested that, if science... more

Natural stimuli from three coherent modalities enhance behavioral responses and electrophysiological cortical activity in humans

International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2014

Cues that involve a number of sensory modalities are processed in the brain in an interactive mul... more Cues that involve a number of sensory modalities are processed in the brain in an interactive multimodal manner rather than independently for each modality. We studied multimodal integration in a natural, yet fully controlled scene, implemented as an interactive game in an auditory-haptic-visual virtual environment. In this imitation of a natural scene, the targets of perception were ecologically valid uni-, bi-and tri-modal manifestations of a simple event-a ball hitting a wall. Subjects were engaged in the game while their behavioral and early cortical electrophysiological responses were measured. Behavioral results confirmed that tri-modal cues were detected faster and more accurately than bi-modal cues, which, likewise, showed advantages over unimodal responses. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded, and the first 200 ms following stimulus onset was analyzed to reveal the latencies of cortical multimodal interactions as estimated by sLORETA. These electrophysiological findings indicated bi-modal as well as trimodal interactions beginning very early (~30 ms), uniquely for each multimodal combination. The results suggest that early cortical multimodal integration accelerates cortical activity and, in turn, enhances performance measures. This acceleration registers on the scalp as sub-additive cortical activation.

EEG Based Analysis of Cognitive Load Enhance Instructional Analysis

One of the recommended approaches in instructional design methods is to optimize the value of wor... more One of the recommended approaches in instructional design methods is to optimize the value of working memory capacity and avoid cognitive overload. Educational neuroscience offers innovative processes and methodologies to analyze cognitive load based on physiological measures. Observing psychophysiological changes when they occur in response to the course of a learning session allows adjustments in the learning session based on the individual learner's capabilities. The availability of non-invasive electroencephalogram (EEG)-based devices and advanced near-real-time analysis techniques have improved our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and have impacted the way we design instructional methods and adapt them to the current learner's cognitive load and valence states. We review Cognitive Load Theory, how cognitive load may be measured, and how analysis of EEG data can be applied to enhance learning through real-time measurements of the learner's cognitive load. We show an experiment that provides a proof of concept of real-time measures based on EEG indicators and of mental states during learning.

Seeing Shapes and Hearing Textures: Two Neural Categories of Touch

The Open Neuroscience Journal, 2011

Touching for shape recognition has been shown to activate occipital areas in addition to somatose... more Touching for shape recognition has been shown to activate occipital areas in addition to somatosensory areas. In this study we asked if this combination of somatosensory and other sensory processing areas also exist in other kinds of touch recognition. In particular, does touch for texture roughness matching activate other sensory processing areas apart from somatosensory areas? We addressed this question with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using wooden abstract stimulus objects whose shape or texture were to be identified. The participants judged if pairs of objects had the same shape or the same texture. We found that the activated brain areas for texture and shape matching have similar underlying structures, a combination of the primary motor area and somatosensory areas. Areas associated with object-shape processing were activated between stimuli during shape matching and not texture roughness matching, while auditory areas were activated during encoding of texture and not for shape stimuli. Matching of textures also involves left BA47, an area associated with retrieval of relational information. We suggest that texture roughness is recognized in a framework of ordering. Left-lateralized activations favoring texture might reflect semantic processing associated with grading roughness quantitatively, as opposed to the more qualitative distinctions between shapes.

Real Time EEG Based Measurements of Cognitive Load Indicates Mental States During Learning

One of the recommended approaches in instructional design methods is to optimize the value of wor... more One of the recommended approaches in instructional design methods is to optimize the value of working memory capacity and avoid cognitive overload. Educational neuroscience offers novel processes and methodologies to analyze cognitive load based on physiological measures. Observing psychophysiological changes when they occur in response to the course of a learning session allows adjustments in the learning session based on the individual learner’s capabilities. The availability of non-invasive electroencephalogram (EEG)-based devices and advanced near-real-time analysis techniques have improved our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and have impacted the way we design instructional methods and adapt them to the current learner’s cognitive load and valence states. We will review Cognitive Load Theory, how cognitive load may be measured, and how analysis of EEG data can be applied to enhance learning through real-time measurements of the learner’s cognitive load. We show a lea...

How Long Is Too Long: An Individual Time-Window for Motor Planning

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2019

The Science of Neurofeedback: Learnability and Effects

Neuroscience, Jan 15, 2018

Cognitive enhancement: A system view

International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2017

Mechanical Models for the Representation of Visco-Elastic Properties

British Journal of Applied Physics, 1950

Models of varying complexity, built of spring and dashpot elements, are frequently used as a simp... more Models of varying complexity, built of spring and dashpot elements, are frequently used as a simple means of expressing the relation between a particular component of stress and the corresponding component of strain in a visco-elastic material. It is shown that any such model is equivalent to two alternative spring-dashpot models of canonic form. The exclusive use of models in

Theta neurofeedback effects on motor memory consolidation and performance accuracy: An apparent paradox?

Neuroscience, 2017

Evidence for deficient motor planning in ADHD

Scientific Reports, 2017

We compare motor planning mechanisms of ADHD and control subjects based on their effect on later ... more We compare motor planning mechanisms of ADHD and control subjects based on their effect on later observed kinematic characteristics. We monitor hand movement following planning conditions that differ in preparation time, and evaluate the differences across conditions and participants with/without ADHD. Our findings show that when there is sufficient planning time, people without ADHD seem to have a motor plan ready, and immediately initiate a planned movement after a 'GO' cue, with a bell shaped velocity profile. When planning time is not sufficient, they start the movement in a delayed time, possibly indicating that they needed to complete a movement plan. However, people with ADHD, did not start movement immediately after the cue, even when provided with a long preparation time, possibly indicating that even for this planning interval they did not have a motion plan ready. The movement was not only delayed, its velocity profile was not bell shaped and had several peaks. We further found differences between control and ADHD participants in the velocity profile, variability and jitter of movements. Our results suggest that ADHD motion characteristics, are associated with an immature motor plan. Based on the results we propose a paradigm to evaluate deficiencies in motor planning.

3D faces are recognized more accurately and faster than 2D faces, but with similar inversion effects

Vision Research, Sep 1, 2017

Recognition of faces typically occurs via holistic processing where individual features are combi... more Recognition of faces typically occurs via holistic processing where individual features are combined to provide an overall facial representation. However, when faces are inverted, there is greater reliance on featural processing where faces are recognized based on their individual features. These findings are based on a substantial number of studies using 2-dimensional (2D) faces and it is unknown whether these results can be extended to 3-dimensional (3D) faces, which have more depth information that is absent in the typical 2D stimuli used in face recognition literature. Using the face inversion paradigm, the current study investigated how holistic and featural processing are differentially influenced by 2D and 3D faces. Twenty-five participants completed a delayed face-matching task consisting of upright and inverted faces that were presented as both 2D and 3D stereoscopic images. Recognition accuracy was significantly higher for 3D upright faces compared to 2D upright faces, providing support that the enriched visual information in 3D stereoscopic images facilitates holistic processing that is essential for the recognition of upright faces. Typical face inversion effects were also obtained, regardless of whether the faces were presented in 2D or 3D. Moreover, recognition performances for 2D inverted and 3D inverted faces did not differ. Taken together, these results demonstrated that 3D stereoscopic effects influence face recognition during holistic processing but not during featural processing. Our findings therefore provide a novel perspective that furthers our understanding of face recognition mechanisms, shedding light on how the integration of stereoscopic information in 3D faces influences face recognition processes.

Reduced mental load in learning a motor visual task with virtual 3D method

Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Nov 27, 2017

Distance learning is expanding rapidly, fueled by the novel technologies for shared recorded teac... more Distance learning is expanding rapidly, fueled by the novel technologies for shared recorded teaching sessions on the Web. Here, we ask whether 3D stereoscopic (3DS) virtual learning environment teaching sessions are more compelling than typical two-dimensional (2D) video sessions and whether this type of teaching results in superior learning. The research goal was to compare learning in 2 virtual learning scenarios-on 2D displays and with an identical 3DS scenario. Participants watched a 2D or 3DS video of an instructor demonstrating a box origami paper-folding task. We compared participants' folding test scores and self-assessment questionnaires of the teaching scenarios and calculated their cognitive load index (CLI) based on electroencephalogram measurements during the observation periods. Results showed a highly significant difference between participants' folding test scores, CLI, and self-assessment questionnaire results in 2D compared to 3DS sessions. Our findings indicate that employing stereoscopic 3D technology over 2D displays in the design of emerging virtual and augmented reality applications in distance learning has advantages.

Imagery of motor actions: effects of kinaesthetic versus visual-motor mode of imagery on single-trial EEG

The EMPATHIC Project: Building an Expressive, Advanced Virtual Coach to Improve Independent Healthy-Life-Years of the Elderly

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Feb 1, 2018

This paper outlines the EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project, which aims to research, innovate,... more This paper outlines the EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project, which aims to research, innovate, explore and validate new interaction paradigms and platforms for future generations of Personalized Virtual Coaches to assist elderly people living independently at and around their home. Innovative multimodal face analytics, adaptive spoken dialogue systems, and natural language interfaces are part of what the project investigates and innovates, aiming to help dependent aging persons and their carers. It will uses remote, non-intrusive technologies to extract physiological markers of emotional states and adapt respective coach responses. In doing so, it aims to develop causal models for emotionally believable coach-user interactions, which shall engage elders and thus keep off loneliness, sustain health, enhance quality of life, and simplify access to future telecare services. Through measurable end-user validations performed in Spain, Norway and France (and complementary user evaluations in Italy), the proposed methods and solutions will have to demonstrate usefulness, reliability, flexibility and robustness.

The EMPATHIC Project: Building an Expressive, Advanced Virtual Coach to Improve Independent Healthy-Life-Years of the Elderly

ArXiv, 2021

This paper outlines the EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project, which aims to research, innovate,... more This paper outlines the EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project, which aims to research, innovate, explore and validate new interaction paradigms and platforms for future generations of Personalized Virtual Coaches to assist elderly people living independently at and around their home. Innovative multimodial face analytics, adaptive spoken dialogue systems, and natural language interfaces are part of what the project investigates and innovates, aiming to help dependent aging persons and their carers. It will use remote, non-intrusive technologies to extract physiological markers of emotional states and adapt respective coach responses. In doing so, it aims to develop causal models for emotionally believable coach-user interactions, which shall engage elders and thus keep off loneliness, sustain health, enhance quality of life, and simplify access to future telecare services. Through measurable end-user validations performed in Spain, Norway and France (and complementary user evaluati...

EMPATHIC, Expressive, Advanced Virtual Coach to Improve Independent Healthy-Life-Years of the Elderdy

The EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project will research, innovate, explore and validate new para... more The EMPATHIC Research & Innovation project will research, innovate, explore and validate new paradigms and platforms, laying the foundation for future generations of Personalised Virtual Coaches to assist elderly people living independently at and around their home. Innovative multimodal face analytics, adaptive spoken dialogue systems and natural language interfaces are part of what the project will research and innovate, in order to help dependent aging persons and their carers. The project will use remote non-intrusive technologies to extract physiological markers of emotional states in real-time for online adaptive responses of the coach, and advance holistic modelling of behavioural, computational, physical and social aspects of a personalised expressive virtual coach. It will develop causal models of coach-user interactional exchanges that engage elders in emotionally believable interactions keeping off loneliness, sustaining health status, enhancing quality of life and simpli...

Abstracts of the 16th Annual Meeting of The Israel Society for Neuroscience: Eilat, Israel, November 25–27, 2007

Neural Plasticity, 2007

The Israel Society for Neuroscience—ISFN—was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scient... more The Israel Society for Neuroscience—ISFN—was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scientists conducting research in the area of neurobiology. The primary goal of the society was to promote and disseminate the knowledge and understanding acquired by its members, and to strengthen interactions between them. Since then, the society holds its annual meeting every year in Eilat usually during December. At this annual meetings, the senior Israeli neurobiologists, their teams, and their graduate students, as well as foreign scientists and students, present their recent research findings in platform and poster presentations, and the program of the meeting is mainly based on the 338 received abstracts which are published in this volume. The meeting also offers the opportunity for the researchers to exchange information with each other, often leading to the initiation of collaborative studies. Both the number of members of the society and those participating in the annual meeting is ...

Effects of Order and Sensory Modality in Stiffness Perception

Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, Aug 1, 2012

The stiffness properties of an environment are perceived during active manual manipulation primar... more The stiffness properties of an environment are perceived during active manual manipulation primarily by processing force cues and position-based tactile, kinesthetic, and visual information. Using a two alternative forced choice (2AFC) stiffness discrimination task, we tested how the perceiver integrates stiffness-related information based on sensory feedback from one or two modalities and the origins of within-session shifts in stiffness discrimination ability. Two factors were investigated: practice and the amount of available sensory information. Subjects discriminated between the stiffness of two targets that were presented either haptically or visuohaptically in two subsequent blocks. Our results show that prior experience in a unisensory haptic stiffness discrimination block greatly improved performance when visual feedback was subsequently provided along with haptic feedback. This improvement could not be attributed to effects induced by practice or multisensory stimulus presentation. Our findings suggest that optimization integration theories of multisensory perception need to account for past sensory experience that may affect current perception of the task even within a single session.

Author Correction: Evidence for deficient motor planning in ADHD

Scientific Reports, 2018

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of t... more

Thought experiments in science education: potential and current realization

International Journal of Science Education, 2000

Thought Experiments (TEs) have a long history of use in science. It is suggested that, if science... more

Natural stimuli from three coherent modalities enhance behavioral responses and electrophysiological cortical activity in humans

International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2014

Cues that involve a number of sensory modalities are processed in the brain in an interactive mul... more Cues that involve a number of sensory modalities are processed in the brain in an interactive multimodal manner rather than independently for each modality. We studied multimodal integration in a natural, yet fully controlled scene, implemented as an interactive game in an auditory-haptic-visual virtual environment. In this imitation of a natural scene, the targets of perception were ecologically valid uni-, bi-and tri-modal manifestations of a simple event-a ball hitting a wall. Subjects were engaged in the game while their behavioral and early cortical electrophysiological responses were measured. Behavioral results confirmed that tri-modal cues were detected faster and more accurately than bi-modal cues, which, likewise, showed advantages over unimodal responses. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded, and the first 200 ms following stimulus onset was analyzed to reveal the latencies of cortical multimodal interactions as estimated by sLORETA. These electrophysiological findings indicated bi-modal as well as trimodal interactions beginning very early (~30 ms), uniquely for each multimodal combination. The results suggest that early cortical multimodal integration accelerates cortical activity and, in turn, enhances performance measures. This acceleration registers on the scalp as sub-additive cortical activation.

EEG Based Analysis of Cognitive Load Enhance Instructional Analysis

One of the recommended approaches in instructional design methods is to optimize the value of wor... more One of the recommended approaches in instructional design methods is to optimize the value of working memory capacity and avoid cognitive overload. Educational neuroscience offers innovative processes and methodologies to analyze cognitive load based on physiological measures. Observing psychophysiological changes when they occur in response to the course of a learning session allows adjustments in the learning session based on the individual learner's capabilities. The availability of non-invasive electroencephalogram (EEG)-based devices and advanced near-real-time analysis techniques have improved our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and have impacted the way we design instructional methods and adapt them to the current learner's cognitive load and valence states. We review Cognitive Load Theory, how cognitive load may be measured, and how analysis of EEG data can be applied to enhance learning through real-time measurements of the learner's cognitive load. We show an experiment that provides a proof of concept of real-time measures based on EEG indicators and of mental states during learning.

Seeing Shapes and Hearing Textures: Two Neural Categories of Touch

The Open Neuroscience Journal, 2011

Touching for shape recognition has been shown to activate occipital areas in addition to somatose... more Touching for shape recognition has been shown to activate occipital areas in addition to somatosensory areas. In this study we asked if this combination of somatosensory and other sensory processing areas also exist in other kinds of touch recognition. In particular, does touch for texture roughness matching activate other sensory processing areas apart from somatosensory areas? We addressed this question with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using wooden abstract stimulus objects whose shape or texture were to be identified. The participants judged if pairs of objects had the same shape or the same texture. We found that the activated brain areas for texture and shape matching have similar underlying structures, a combination of the primary motor area and somatosensory areas. Areas associated with object-shape processing were activated between stimuli during shape matching and not texture roughness matching, while auditory areas were activated during encoding of texture and not for shape stimuli. Matching of textures also involves left BA47, an area associated with retrieval of relational information. We suggest that texture roughness is recognized in a framework of ordering. Left-lateralized activations favoring texture might reflect semantic processing associated with grading roughness quantitatively, as opposed to the more qualitative distinctions between shapes.

Real Time EEG Based Measurements of Cognitive Load Indicates Mental States During Learning

One of the recommended approaches in instructional design methods is to optimize the value of wor... more One of the recommended approaches in instructional design methods is to optimize the value of working memory capacity and avoid cognitive overload. Educational neuroscience offers novel processes and methodologies to analyze cognitive load based on physiological measures. Observing psychophysiological changes when they occur in response to the course of a learning session allows adjustments in the learning session based on the individual learner’s capabilities. The availability of non-invasive electroencephalogram (EEG)-based devices and advanced near-real-time analysis techniques have improved our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and have impacted the way we design instructional methods and adapt them to the current learner’s cognitive load and valence states. We will review Cognitive Load Theory, how cognitive load may be measured, and how analysis of EEG data can be applied to enhance learning through real-time measurements of the learner’s cognitive load. We show a lea...

How Long Is Too Long: An Individual Time-Window for Motor Planning

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2019

The Science of Neurofeedback: Learnability and Effects

Neuroscience, Jan 15, 2018

Cognitive enhancement: A system view

International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2017

Mechanical Models for the Representation of Visco-Elastic Properties

British Journal of Applied Physics, 1950

Models of varying complexity, built of spring and dashpot elements, are frequently used as a simp... more Models of varying complexity, built of spring and dashpot elements, are frequently used as a simple means of expressing the relation between a particular component of stress and the corresponding component of strain in a visco-elastic material. It is shown that any such model is equivalent to two alternative spring-dashpot models of canonic form. The exclusive use of models in

Theta neurofeedback effects on motor memory consolidation and performance accuracy: An apparent paradox?

Neuroscience, 2017