Laughter and smiling facial expression modelling for the generation of virtual affective behavior.

Laughter and smiling are significant facial expressions used in human to human communication. We present a computational model for the generation of facial expressions associated with laughter and smiling in order to facilitate the synthesis of such facial expressions in virtual characters. In addition, a new method to reproduce these types of laughter is proposed and validated using databases of generic and specific facial smile expressions.

Self-organized criticality, plasticity and sensorimotor coupling. Explorations with a neurorobotic model in a behavioural preference task.

During the last two decades, analysis of 1/ƒ noise in cognitive science has led to a considerable progress in the way we understand the organization of our mental life. However, there is still a lack of specific models providing explanations of how 1/ƒ noise is generated in coupled brain-body-environment systems, since existing models and experiments typically target either externally observable behaviour or isolated neuronal systems but do not address the interplay between neuronal mechanisms and sensorimotor dynamics. We present a conceptual model of a minimal neurorobotic agent solving a behavioural task that makes it possible to relate mechanistic (neurodynamic) and behavioural levels of description.

Quantifying long-range correlations and 1/f patterns in a minimal experiment of social interaction.

In recent years, researchers in social cognition have found the "perceptual crossing paradigm" to be both a theoretical and practical advance toward meeting particular challenges. This paradigm has been used to analyze the type of interactive processes that emerge in minimal interactions and it has allowed progress toward understanding of the principles of social cognition processes. In this paper, we analyze whether some critical aspects of these interactions could not have been observed by previous studies.

Intermittent animal behavior: the adjustment-deployment dilemma.

Intermittency is ubiquitous in animal behavior. We depict a coordination problem that is part of the more general structure of intermittent adaptation: the adjustment-deployment dilemma. It captures the intricate compromise between the time spent in adjusting a response and the time used to deploy it: The adjustment process improves fitness with time, but during deployment fitness of the solution decays as environmental conditions change.

[MOTRICO project: the mesh generation problem of the human left coronary artery bifurcation].

The MOTRICO project plans the development of an advanced environment that will offer computer assistance for cardiac therapy and diagnosis, which would be useful in the hemodynamics units of those hospitals that have access to the instrumental techniques of Angiography and intravascular Ultrasounds. The initial work presented in this paper will describe modeling and finite element mesh generation of an idealized model of the human left coronary artery bifurcation. The computational geometric model has been developed on the basis of real anatomical information.