Aesthetic chills modulate reward learning in anhedonic depression.

Objective: This study aimed to examine the potential of experiencing aesthetic chills to enhance reward learning in individuals with elevated depressive symptoms, specifically anhedonia, by investigating the effect of chills on participants' ability to modulate behavior as a function of rewards.

Methods: A total of 103 participants with elevated depressive symptoms took part in the experiment. Among them, 59 participants had depressive symptoms (BDI ≥ 20), with 26 classified as "High Anhedonic" (HA) and 33 as "Low Anhedonic" (LA).

Image classification and reconstruction from low-density EEG.

Recent advances in visual decoding have enabled the classification and reconstruction of perceived images from the brain. However, previous approaches have predominantly relied on stationary, costly equipment like fMRI or high-density EEG, limiting the real-world availability and applicability of such projects. Additionally, several EEG-based paradigms have utilized artifactual, rather than stimulus-related information yielding flawed classification and reconstruction results.

Brief Report: Quantifying Speech Production Coordination from Non- and Minimally-Speaking Individuals.

Purpose: Non-verbal utterances are an important tool of communication for individuals who are non- or minimally-speaking. While these utterances are typically understood by caregivers, they can be challenging to interpret by their larger community. To date, there has been little work done to detect and characterize the vocalizations produced by non- or minimally-speaking individuals.

Aesthetic chills mitigate maladaptive cognition in depression.

Background: Depression is a major global health challenge, affecting over 300 million people worldwide. Current pharmacological and psychotherapeutic interventions have limited efficacy, underscoring the need for novel approaches. Emerging evidence suggests that peak emotional experiences characterized by awe, transcendence, and meaning hold promise for rapidly shifting maladaptive cognitive patterns in depression.

Fascia Ecosystem: A Step Forward in Sleep Engineering and Research.

Millions suffer from sleep disorders, and sleep clinics and research institutions seek improved sleep study methods. This paper proposes the Fascia Ecosystem for Sleep Engineering to improve traditional sleep studies. The Fascia Sleep Mask is more comfortable and accessible than overnight stays at a sleep center, and the Fascia Portal and Fascia Hub allow for home-based sleep studies with real-time intervention and data analysis capabilities.

Interoceptive technologies for psychiatric interventions: From diagnosis to clinical applications.

Interoception-the perception of internal bodily signals-has emerged as an area of interest due to its implications in emotion and the prevalence of dysfunctional interoceptive processes across psychopathological conditions. Despite the importance of interoception in cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry, its experimental manipulation remains technically challenging. This is due to the invasive nature of existing methods, the limitation of self-report and unimodal measures of interoception, and the absence of standardized approaches across disparate fields.

ReCANVo: A database of real-world communicative and affective nonverbal vocalizations.

Nonverbal vocalizations, such as sighs, grunts, and yells, are informative expressions within typical verbal speech. Likewise, individuals who produce 0-10 spoken words or word approximations ("minimally speaking" individuals) convey rich affective and communicative information through nonverbal vocalizations even without verbal speech. Yet, despite their rich content, little to no data exists on the vocal expressions of this population.

ChillsDB: A Gold Standard for Aesthetic Chills Stimuli.

We introduce ChillsDB the first validated database of audiovisual stimuli eliciting aesthetic chills (goosebumps, psychogenic shivers) in a US population. To discover chills stimuli "in the wild", we devised a bottom-up, ecologically-valid method consisting in searching for mentions of the emotion' somatic markers in user comments throughout social media platforms (YouTube and Reddit). We successfully captured 204 chills-eliciting videos of three categories: music, film, and speech.

Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance.

The link between dreams and creativity has been a topic of intense speculation. Recent scientific findings suggest that sleep onset (known as N1) may be an ideal brain state for creative ideation. However, the specific link between N1 dream content and creativity has remained unclear.

Aesthetic chills cause an emotional drift in valence and arousal.

Aesthetic chills are an embodied peak emotional experience induced by stimuli such as music, films, and speeches and characterized by dopaminergic release. The emotional consequences of chills in terms of valence and arousal are still debated and the existing empirical data is conflicting. In this study, we tested the effects of ChillsDB, an open-source repository of chills-inducing stimuli, on the emotional ratings of 600+ participants.

Situated VR: Toward a Congruent Hybrid Reality Without Experiential Artifacts.

The vision of extended reality (XR) systems is living in a world where real and virtual elements seamlessly and contextually augment experiences of ourselves and the worlds we inhabit. While this integration promises exciting opportunities for the future of XR, it comes with the risk of experiential distortions and feelings of dissociation, especially related to virtual reality (VR). When transitioning from a virtual world to the real world, users report of experiential structures that linger on, as sort of after images, causing disruptions in their daily life.

Development and Study of Ezzence: A Modular Scent Wearable to Improve Wellbeing in Home Sleep Environments.

Ezzence is the first smartphone-controlled olfactometer designed for both day and night conditions. We discuss the design and technical implementation of Ezzence and report on a study to evaluate the feasibility of using the device in home-based sleep environments. The study results ( = 40) show that participants were satisfied with the device and found it easy to use.

Understanding AAC Usage and Needs through a Web Survey with Device Users and Families.

Augmentative and alternative communication devices (AAC) can help support communication for millions of people who have differences in speech and language abilities. Existing commercial devices do not meet all the diverse needs of some individuals. Interviews and surveys were conducted with individuals who have speech or language challenges (n=4 interviews; n=15 survey respondents), or their loved ones (n=9 interviews, n=49 survey respondents).

Dream engineering: Simulating worlds through sensory stimulation.

We explore the application of a wide range of sensory stimulation technologies to the area of sleep and dream engineering. We begin by emphasizing the causal role of the body in dream generation, and describe a circuitry between the sleeping body and the dreaming mind. We suggest that nearly any sensory stimuli has potential for modulating experience in sleep.

Dormio: A targeted dream incubation device.

Information processing during sleep is active, ongoing and accessible to engineering. Protocols such as targeted memory reactivation use sensory stimuli during sleep to reactivate memories and demonstrate subsequent, specific enhancement of their consolidation. These protocols rely on physiological, as opposed to phenomenological, evidence of their reactivation.

Gut-Brain Computer Interfacing (GBCI) : Wearable Monitoring of Gastric Myoelectric Activity.

We propose a new area for wearable technology and interaction by acquiring gastrointestinal signals non-invasively from the abdomen. The mind-gut connection has flourished as a research area in the past two decades, elucidating the guts key role in stress, affect, and memory. Meanwhile, engineering advancements have shown potential in accuracy of non-invasive gastric recordings.

Wearable Lab on Body: Combining Sensing of Biochemical and Digital Markers in a Wearable Device.

Wearables are being widely researched for monitoring individual's health and wellbeing. Current generation wearable devices sense an individual's physiological data such as heart rate, respiration, electrodermal activity, and EEG, but lack in sensing their biological counterparts, which drive the majority of individual's physiological signals. On the other hand, biosensors for detecting biochemical markers are currently limited to one-time use, are non-continuous and don't provide flexibility in choosing which biomarker they sense.

AttentivU: a Biofeedback Device to Monitor and Improve Engagement in the Workplace.

Everyday work is becoming increasingly complex and cognitively demanding. A person's level of attention influences how effectively their brain prepares itself for action, and how much effort they apply to a task. However, the various distractions of the modern work environment often make it hard to pay and sustain attention.

An Exploration of Form Factors for Sleep-Olfactory Interfaces.

Releasing scent during sleep has been shown to influence the emotional valence of dreams, reduce cigarette smoking behavior, strengthen memories as well as enhance restorative slow-wave activity. Nevertheless, current scent technologies used in sleep laboratories are not portable and require the use of nasal masks and large olfactometers. In this paper we investigated the preferred form factor and acceptance of a set of biometric wearables that can release scent based on the user's physiological state.

AttentivU: An EEG-Based Closed-Loop Biofeedback System for Real-Time Monitoring and Improvement of Engagement for Personalized Learning.

Information about a person's engagement and attention might be a valuable asset in many settings including work situations, driving, and learning environments. To this end, we propose the first prototype of a device called AttentivU-a system that uses a wearable system which consists of two main components. Component 1 is represented by an EEG headband used to measure the engagement of a person in real-time.

Investigating Bodily Responses to Unknown Words: a Focus on Facial Expressions and EEG.

Occurrences of unknown words in a conversation can be challenging and often prevent people from engaging in fluent communication with each other. Even worse, currently very little is known about possible bodily responses when a listener comes across unknown words, especially when context information is not available in the conversation to facilitate understanding. In this work, we look at facial expressions and electroencephalography (EEG) as two potential body signals that may convey whether users are having difficulties understanding the words they hear.

BioEssence: A Wearable Olfactory Display that Monitors Cardio-respiratory Information to Support Mental Wellbeing.

This work introduces a novel wearable olfactory display that provides just-in-time release of scents based on the physiological state of the wearer. The device can release up to three scents and passively captures subtle chest vibrations associated with the beating of the heart and respiration through clothes.BioEssenceiscontrolledviaacustom-madesmartphone app that allows the creation of physiological rules to trigger different scents (e.

Wearable Motion-Based Heart Rate at Rest: A Workplace Evaluation.

This paper studies the feasibility of using low-cost motion sensors to provide opportunistic heart rate assessments from ballistocardiographic signals during restful periods of daily life. Three wearable devices were used to capture peripheral motions at specific body locations (head, wrist, and trouser pocket) of 15 participants during five regular workdays each. Three methods were implemented to extract heart rate from motion data and their performance was compared to those obtained with an FDA-cleared device.