Automatic Spontaneous Speech Analysis for the Detection of Cognitive Functional Decline in Older Adults: Multilanguage Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: The rise in life expectancy is associated with an increase in long-term and gradual cognitive decline. Treatment effectiveness is enhanced at the early stage of the disease. Therefore, there is a need to find low-cost and ecological solutions for mass screening of community-dwelling older adults.

Effectiveness of Serious Games in Improving Genetic Literacy and Genetic Risk Awareness in the General Public: A Pilot Study.

Genomics is an integral part of medical science; however, European citizens' literacy on basic genetic concepts is still poor. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Serious Games (SGs) in increasing genetic literacy in laypeople and to assess the impact of SGs on participants' perceived self-efficacy (SE) in managing genetic risk implications. Two minigames and an adventure game were created, together with leaflets reporting the same information as the SGs.

Integrating Social Assistive Robots, IoT, Virtual Communities and Smart Objects to Assist at-Home Independently Living Elders: the MoveCare Project.

The integration of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) frameworks with Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) has proven useful for monitoring and assisting older adults in their own home. However, the difficulties associated with long-term deployments in real-world complex environments are still highly under-explored. In this work, we first present the MoveCare system, an unobtrusive platform that, through the integration of a SAR into an AAL framework, aimed to monitor, assist and provide social, cognitive, and physical stimulation in the own houses of elders living alone and at risk of falling into frailty.

A mobile app to transparently distinguish single- from dual-task walking for the ecological monitoring of age-related changes in daily-life gait.

Background: Early detection of gait impairments in older adults allows the early uncovering of fall risk and/or cognitive deficits, resulting in timely interventions. Dual-task paradigms have been shown to be more sensitive than single-task conditions for the detection of subtle yet relevant gait impairments.

Research Question: Can a system - encompassing a pair of instrumented insoles and a customized mobile app - transparently and accurately study ecological walking activities in single- and dual-task conditions, with the aim of detecting early and subtle age-related alterations of gait?

Methods: The system was tested on 19 older adults during outdoor walking (two identical single-task trials and two motor-cognitive dual-task trials with the user engaged in a simple phone call and in a cognitive-demanding phone call).

A Tablet App for Handwriting Skill Screening at the Preliteracy Stage: Instrument Validation Study.

Background: Difficulties in handwriting, such as dysgraphia, impact several aspects of a child's everyday life. Current methodologies for the detection of such difficulties in children have the following three main weaknesses: (1) they are prone to subjective evaluation; (2) they can be administered only when handwriting is mastered, thus delaying the diagnosis and the possible adoption of countermeasures; and (3) they are not always easily accessible to the entire community.

Objective: This work aims at developing a solution able to: (1) quantitatively measure handwriting features whose alteration is typically seen in children with dysgraphia; (2) enable their study in a preliteracy population; and (3) leverage a standard consumer technology to increase the accessibility of both early screening and longitudinal monitoring of handwriting difficulties.

IoT ink pen for ecological monitoring of daily life handwriting.

The analysis of the writing gesture has been successfully investigated in the diagnosis of age-related diseases, but the current technologies and methods still do not allow the ecological daily monitoring of handwriting, mostly because they rely on standardized writing protocols. In this study, we first designed and validated a novel electronic ink pen, equipped with motion and writing force sensing, for the ecological daily-life monitoring of handwriting in uncontrolled environments. We used the pen to acquire writing activities from healthy adults, from which we computed useful handwriting and tremor indicators.

Supervised Digital Neuropsychological Tests for Cognitive Decline in Older Adults: Usability and Clinical Validity Study.

Background: Dementia is a major and growing health problem, and early diagnosis is key to its management.

Objective: With the ultimate goal of providing a monitoring tool that could be used to support the screening for cognitive decline, this study aims to develop a supervised, digitized version of 2 neuropsychological tests: Trail Making Test and Bells Test. The system consists of a web app that implements a tablet-based version of the tests and consists of an innovative vocal assistant that acts as the virtual supervisor for the execution of the test.

Multi-Exergames to Set Targets and Supplement the Intensified Conventional Balance Training in Patients With Stroke: A Randomized Pilot Trial.

People who survive a stroke usually suffer movement disorders resulting in involuntary abnormal movements. Intensive and repetitive physiotherapy is often a key to functional restoration of movements. Rehabilitation centers have recently offered balance training supported by exergames in addition to conventional therapy.

Automatic speech analysis to early detect functional cognitive decline in elderly population.

This study aimed at evaluating whether people with a normal cognitive function can be discriminated from subjects with a mild impairment of cognitive function based on a set of acoustic features derived from spontaneous speech. Voice recordings from 90 Italian subjects (age >65 years; group 1: 47 subjects with MMSE>26; group 2: 43 subjects with 20≤ MMSE ≤26) were collected. Voice samples were processed using a MATLAB-based custom software to derive a broad set of known acoustic features.

Validity and usability of a smart ball-driven serious game to monitor grip strength in independent elderlies.

Telemonitoring is one of the most expedient answers to the strong need for preventive care imposed by the rapidly aging society. We propose an innovative solution to the detection of early signs of frailty by presenting a serious game controlled by a smart sensorized soft plastic ball, designed to achieve continuous home-based monitoring of muscle weakness in older adults. Design, development, and testing of the smart ball and of the game interface devised to guide the monitoring procedure are presented.

Hand Rehabilitation and Telemonitoring through Smart Toys.

We describe here a platform for autonomous hand rehabilitation and telemonitoring of young patients. A toy embedding the electronics required to sense fingers pressure in different grasping modalities is the core element of this platform. The system has been realized following the user-centered design methodology taking into account stakeholder needs from start: clinicians require reliable measurements and the ability to get a picture remotely on rehabilitation progression; children have asked to interact with a pleasant and comfortable object that is easy to use, safe, and rewarding.

Clustering the Brain With "CluB": A New Toolbox for Quantitative Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Data.

In this paper we describe and validate a new coordinate-based method for meta-analysis of neuroimaging data based on an optimized hierarchical clustering algorithm: CluB (Clustering the Brain). The CluB toolbox permits both to extract a set of spatially coherent clusters of activations from a database of stereotactic coordinates, and to explore each single cluster of activation for its composition according to the cognitive dimensions of interest. This last step, called "cluster composition analysis," permits to explore neurocognitive effects by adopting a factorial-design logic and by testing the working hypotheses using either asymptotic tests, or exact tests either in a classic inference, or in a Bayesian-like context.

How Prefrail Older People Living Alone Perceive Information and Communications Technology and What They Would Ask a Robot for: Qualitative Study.

Background: In the last decade, the family system has changed significantly. Although in the past, older people used to live with their children, nowadays, they cannot always depend on assistance of their relatives. Many older people wish to remain as independent as possible while remaining in their homes, even when living alone.

Usability Testing of Two Mini-Games and One Serious Game to Educate People About Genetics.

The lowering costs of DNA sequencing and the diffusion of numerous Direct to Consumer Genetic Testing (DTC-GT) services have made genetic testing easily available to the general public who can buy them without any medical prescription or consultation. Nevertheless, the knowledge required to understand the provided results and their implications is still scarce in the general public. Starting from these considerations, we developed two mini-games and one serious game to increase people genetic literacy through experiential learning.

Serious Games for Improving Genetic Literacy and Genetic Risk Awareness in the General Public: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Genetic testing and genetic risk information are gaining importance in personalized medicine and disease prevention. However, progress in these fields does not reflect increased knowledge and awareness of genetic risk in the general public.

Objective: Our aim is to develop and test the efficacy of a suite of serious games, developed for mobile and Web platforms, in order to increase knowledge of basic genetic concepts and promote awareness of genetic risk management among lay people.

How many deficits in the same dyslexic brains? A behavioural and fMRI assessment of comorbidity in adult dyslexics.

Dyslexia can have different manifestations: this has motivated different theories on its nature, on its underlying brain bases and enduring controversies on how to best treat it. The relative weight of the different manifestations has never been evaluated using both behavioural and fMRI measures, a challenge taken here to assess the major systems called into play in dyslexia by different theories. We found that adult well-compensated dyslexics were systematically impaired only in reading and in visuo-phonological tasks, while deficits for other systems (e.

Autonomous rehabilitation at stroke patients home for balance and gait: safety, usability and compliance of a virtual reality system.

Background: New technologies, such as telerehabilitation and gaming devices offer the possibility for patients to train at home. This opens the challenge of safety for the patient as he/she is called to exercise neither with a therapist on the patients' side nor with a therapist linked remotely to supervise the sessions.

Aim: To study the safety, usability and patient acceptance of an autonomous telerehabilitation system for balance and gait (the REWIRE platform) in the patients home.

User Perspectives on Exergames Designed to Explore the Hemineglected Space for Stroke Patients With Visuospatial Neglect: Usability Study.

Background: Visuospatial neglect due to stroke is characterized by the inability to perceive stimuli emerging in the area opposite to the side of brain damage. Besides adopting conventional rehabilitation methods to treat neglect symptoms, the use of virtual reality (VR) is becoming increasingly popular. We designed a series of 9 exergames aimed to improve exploration of the neglected side of space.

Exergames Encouraging Exploration of Hemineglected Space in Stroke Patients With Visuospatial Neglect: A Feasibility Study.

Background: Use of exergames can complement conventional therapy and increase the amount and intensity of visuospatial neglect (VSN) training. A series of 9 exergames-games based on therapeutic principles-aimed at improving exploration of the neglected space for patients with VSN symptoms poststroke was developed and tested for its feasibility.

Objectives: The goal was to determine the feasibility of the exergames with minimal supervision in terms of (1) implementation of the intervention, including adherence, attrition and safety, and (2) limited efficacy testing, aiming to document possible effects on VSN symptoms in a case series of patients early poststroke.

On the assessment of coordination between upper extremities: towards a common language between rehabilitation engineers, clinicians and neuroscientists.

Well-developed coordination of the upper extremities is critical for function in everyday life. Interlimb coordination is an intuitive, yet subjective concept that refers to spatio-temporal relationships between kinematic, kinetic and physiological variables of two or more limbs executing a motor task with a common goal. While both the clinical and neuroscience communities agree on the relevance of assessing and quantifying interlimb coordination, rehabilitation engineers struggle to translate the knowledge and needs of clinicians and neuroscientists into technological devices for the impaired.

Ability of Low-Cost Force-Feedback Device to Influence Postural Stability.

Low-cost gaming technology offers promising devices for the rehabilitation of stroke patients at home. While several attempts have been made to use low-cost motion tracking devices (Kinect) or balance boards (Wii Board), the potential of low-cost haptic devices has yet to be explored in this context. The objective of this study was to investigate whether it is possible to influence postural stability with a low-cost device despite its technical limitations, and to explore the most promising modes of haptic interaction to increase and decrease postural stability.

A novel approach to the problem of non-uniqueness of the solution in hierarchical clustering.

The existence of multiple solutions in clustering, and in hierarchical clustering in particular, is often ignored in practical applications. However, this is a non-trivial problem, as different data orderings can result in different cluster sets that, in turns, may lead to different interpretations of the same data. The method presented here offers a solution to this issue.

Usability and Effects of an Exergame-Based Balance Training Program.

Post-stroke recovery benefits from structured, intense, challenging, and repetitive therapy. Exergames have emerged as promising to achieve sustained therapy practice and patient motivation. This study assessed the usability and effects of exergames on balance and gait.

Computational Intelligence and Game Design for Effective At-Home Stroke Rehabilitation.

Objective: The aim of this article is to describe a game engine that has all the characteristics needed to support rehabilitation at home. The low-cost tracking devices recently introduced in the entertainment market allow measuring reliably at home, in real time, players' motion with a hands-free approach. Such systems have also become a source of inspiration for researchers working in rehabilitation.

Clustering the lexicon in the brain: a meta-analysis of the neurofunctional evidence on noun and verb processing.

Although it is widely accepted that nouns and verbs are functionally independent linguistic entities, it is less clear whether their processing recruits different brain areas. This issue is particularly relevant for those theories of lexical semantics (and, more in general, of cognition) that suggest the embodiment of abstract concepts, i.e.