2015 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
遠隔操作型アンドロイドを用いた身体感覚転移に基づく適応的インタフェースの開発
| Project/Area Number |
15F15046
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| Research Institution | The University of Tokyo |
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Principal Investigator |
開 一夫 東京大学, 総合文化研究科, 教授 (30323455)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
ALIMARDANI MARYAM 東京大学, 総合文化研究科, 外国人特別研究員
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| Project Period (FY) |
2015-04-24 – 2017-03-31
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| Keywords | 認知科学 / ロボット / 社会脳 |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This study introduces a framework for development of a new generation of therapy robots that can interact with users by monitoring their physiological and mental states. Here we focused on one of the controversial methods of therapy, hypnotherapy. Hypnosis has shown to be useful in treatment of many clinical conditions. But even for healthy people, it can be used as an effective technique for relaxation or enhancement of memory and concentration. Our aim is to develop a robot that collects information about user’s mental and physical states using different biometric sensors (such as EEG for brain activities, EMG for electrical activities in muscles, thermography for body temperature, etc.) and performs cost-effective hypnosis at the comfort of user’s house. The proposed framework consists of three main steps: (1) find the EEG-correlates of mind state before, during, and after hypnosis and establish a cognitive model for the state changes, (2) develop a system that can track changes in user's EEG and other sensors' data in real time and determines the best timing for him to perform each part of the session (e.g. induction or suggestion) and (3) implement our system in a humanoid robot that will talk and conduct hypnosis on users based on their mental states.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
During the past year, we conducted a series of pilot experiments to establish a strategy for our main experiments in the first stage of this study, which is finding EEG features of hypnosis-related brain activities.
In these pilot experiments we could find relatively consistent results with previous studies that detected increase of theta activities for highly suggestible subjects particularly in the temporal, central, parietal, and occipital areas of brain. Also employing two EMG electrodes on subject's arms, we could find strong activities in response to such suggestions as arm rigidity, which for the first time provided physiological evidence that during hypnosis, subjects experience a motor response (muscle engagement) but exhibit no observable motor behaviour (such as bending the arm).
Currently we are conducting a series of larger-scale experiments. In these experiments we are monitoring subjects' EEG activities in a rather longer hypnotic session (about 1 hour). Using the well-known Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, we classify the subjects into 3 groups of high, average, and low suggestible and compare the temporal and spatial changes in their brain activities while they are undergoing the hypnosis session. Also using a thermographic camera we are monitoring their body temperature and measuring their physiological responses to a cooling or warming suggestion. We have so far run experiments with 22 subjects and we aim for 50 people in this study. The collected data are under analysis.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
There are 3 major goals set for the following year:
1) Completing the experiments mentioned above, we are planning to accomplish the first and most challenging stage of this project, which is clarifying the mechanism of hypnosis, finding neural measures that associate with hypnotic state and suggestibility and above all establishing a cognitive model for hypnosis and hypnotisability. This model will predict the subject's mind states during a hypnotic session based on the changes in brain waves and frequency band powers.
2) In the following, the main focus of this research will be development of a BCI system that monitors users' brain activities online and serves as a subject-specific mood-recognition application. This system, which is called 'Hypno-track, detects major changes in the mind states and indicates the best timing for hypnotic instructions. Therefore it can be used by professional hypnotists during hypnotic interventions.
3) The last step in this project will be implementation of Hypno-track system into a humanoid robot, such as Pepper, to promote the application of social robots in hypnotherapy. At this step, we will again conduct surveys with human users to evaluate the performance and competency of our system.
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Research Products
(1 results)
