A COMMUNICATION AID SYSTEM BY FEATURE EXTRACTION OF ELECTROOCULOGRAPHIC SIGNALS

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (06) ◽  
pp. 1950048
Author(s):  
Takenao Sugi ◽  
Ryosuke Baba ◽  
Yoshitaka Matsuda ◽  
Satoru Goto ◽  
Naruto Egashira ◽  
...  

People with serious movement disabilities due to neurodegenerative diseases have problems in their communication with others. Considerable numbers of communication aid systems have been developed in the past. Especially, some of the systems driven by eye movements are thought to be effective for such people. Electrooculographic (EOG) signal reflects the eye movement and the specific pattern of eye movement can be seen in EOG signals. This paper proposes a communication aid system by extracting the features of EOG. The system consists of a computer, analog-to-digital converter, biological amplifier and two monitors. Two monitors, one for a system user and the other for other people, display the same information. Five items are presented in the monitor, and a user selects those items according to the situation in the communication. Selection of the items is done by combining three eye movements: gaze at left, gaze at right and successive blinks. Basic concept of the communication aid system was designed by taking into account the current state of a subject’s movement disability. Then, the design of a screen and the algorithm for detecting eye movement pattern from EOG were determined by using the data of normal healthy subjects. The system worked almost perfectly for normal healthy subjects. Then, the developed system was operated by a subject with serious movement disability. Parts of the system operation were regarded as satisfactory level, and some miss-operation were also seen.

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182199851
Author(s):  
Claudia Bonmassar ◽  
Francesco Pavani ◽  
Alessio Di Renzo ◽  
Cristina Caselli ◽  
Wieske van Zoest

Previous research on covert orienting to the periphery suggested that early profound deaf adults were less susceptible to uninformative gaze cues, though were equally or more affected by non-social arrow cues. The aim of the present work was to investigate whether spontaneous eye movement behaviour helps explain the reduced impact of the social cue in deaf adults. We tracked the gaze of 25 early profound deaf and 25 age-matched hearing observers performing a peripheral discrimination task with uninformative central cues (gaze vs. arrow), stimulus-onset asynchrony (250 vs. 750 ms) and cue-validity (valid vs. invalid) as within-subject factors. In both groups, the cue-effect on RT was comparable for the two cues, although deaf observers responded significantly slower than hearing controls. While deaf and hearing observers eye movement pattern looked similar when the cue was presented in isolation, deaf participants made significantly eye movements than hearing controls once the discrimination target appeared. Notably, further analysis of eye movements in the deaf group revealed that independent of cue-type, cue-validity affected saccade landing position, while latency was not modulated by these factors. Saccade landing position was also strongly related to the magnitude of the validity effect on RT, such that the greater the difference in saccade landing position between invalid and valid trials, the greater the difference in manual RT between invalid and valid trials. This work suggests that the contribution of overt selection in central cueing of attention is more prominent in deaf adults and helps determine the manual performance, irrespective of cue-type.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorit Taragin ◽  
David Tzuriel ◽  
Eli Vakil

The effects of gender, strategy and task characteristics on children's mental rotation (MR) behavioral measures and eye movements were studied. Eye movements reflect thinking pattern and assist understanding mental rotation performance. Eighty-three fourth-grade children (44 boys and 39 girls) were administered the Computerized Windows Mental Rotation test (CWMR) while having their eye movements monitored and completed a Strategy Self-Report (global/local/combined) and a Spatial Span (WM) subtest. Difficulty level affected performance and was reflected in a different eye movement pattern. Boys were more accurate than girls, but they did not differ in their eye movement pattern. Eye movement pattern was related to strategy, accuracy and reaction time, revealing that the global and combined strategy were more effective compared with local strategy. WM was found to correlate with accuracy at the easy level of the test. The usage of eye movement measures assists in elaborating our knowledge regarding MR performance among children and enable a wider understanding regarding the interaction between gender, strategy and difficulty level. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hoo Keat Wong ◽  
Ian D. Stephen

Human behaviour is not only influenced by the physical presence of others, but also implied social presence. According to Risko and Kingstone (2011), an eye tracker can represent an implied social presence which could influence individuals’ gaze behaviour. This study examines the impact of awareness of being eye-tracked on eye movement behaviour in a laboratory setting.  During a classic yes/no face recognition task, participants were made to believe that their eye movements were recorded (or not recorded) by eye trackers. Their looking patterns with and without the awareness of being eye-tracked were compared while perceiving social (faces, faces-and-bodies) and non-social (inanimate objects) video stimuli. Area-of-interest (AOI) analysis revealed that misinformed participants (who were not aware that their eye movements were being recorded) looked more at the body (chest and waist) compared to informed participants (who believed they were being eye-tracked), whereas informed participants fixated longer on the mouth and shorter on the eyes of female models than misinformed participants did. These findings highlight the potential impact of an awareness of being eye tracked on one’s eye movement pattern when perceiving a social stimulus. We therefore suggest that even within laboratory settings an eye tracker may function as an implied social presence that leads individuals to modify their eye movement behaviour according to socially-derived inhibitory norms.


Author(s):  
Moslem Shaabani ◽  
Najmeh Naghibi ◽  
Enayatollah Bakhshi

Background and Aim: Vibration is a method for stimulating the vestibular system. This met­hod can unmask asymmetry between two vesti­bular systems (such as unilateral peripheral ves­tibular disorders). The occurrence of vibration-induced nystagmus (VIN) in healthy subjects can affect the diagnosis of patients with uni­lateral peripheral vestibular disorders. Thus, the evaluation of VIN in healthy subjects is critical to help the diagnosis of unilateral peripheral vestibular disorders. Methods: This study was carried out on 72 hea­lthy subjects (mean ± SD age: 27.12 ± 4.97 years) in the Auditory and Balance Clinic of Rofeideh Rehabilitation Hospital. Vibration sti­mulation with a frequency of 30 and 100 Hz was used on mastoid and posterior cervical mus­cles (PCMs) and simultaneously eye movements were recorded and analyzed using videonystag­mography. Results: The mastoid vibration with a frequ­ency of 30 and 100 Hz, respectively produced VIN in 16.67% and 27.78% of subjects and VIN observed in PCMs vibration with a frequency of 30 and 100 Hz in 4.17% and 9.72% of the subjects. Conclusion: The occurrence of VIN in healthy subjects was more probable with mastoid vib­ration in 100 Hz. In this study, VIN was pre­dominantly horizontal, its direction was toward the stimulated side, and its slow phase velocity was lower than 5 deg/s. These criteria could be used for differentiation between normal and abnormal subjects.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Miscena ◽  
Jozsef Arato ◽  
Raphael Rosenberg

Among the most renowned painters of the early twentieth century, Gustav Klimt is often associated – by experts and laymen alike - with a distinctive style of representation: the visual juxtaposition of realistic features and flattened ornamental patterns. Art historical writing suggests that this juxtaposition allows a two-fold experience; the perception of both the realm of art and the realm of life. While Klimt adopted a variety of stylistic choices in his career, this one popularised his work and was hardly ever used by other artists. The following study was designed to observe whether Klimt’s distinctive style causes a specific behaviour of the viewer, at the level of eye-movements. Twenty-one portraits were shown to thirty viewers while their eye-movements were recorded. The pictures included artworks by Klimt in both his distinctive and non-distinctive styles, as well as other artists of the same historical period. The recorded data show that only Klimt’s distinctive paintings induce a specific eye-movement pattern with alternating longer (“absorbed”) and shorter (“scattered”) fixations. We therefore claim that there is a behavioural correspondence to what art historical interpretations have so far asserted: The perception of “Klimt’s style” can be described as two-fold also at a physiological level.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-311
Author(s):  
José David Moreno ◽  
José A. León ◽  
Lorena A. M. Arnal ◽  
Juan Botella

Abstract. We report the results of a meta-analysis of 22 experiments comparing the eye movement data obtained from young ( Mage = 21 years) and old ( Mage = 73 years) readers. The data included six eye movement measures (mean gaze duration, mean fixation duration, total sentence reading time, mean number of fixations, mean number of regressions, and mean length of progressive saccade eye movements). Estimates were obtained of the typified mean difference, d, between the age groups in all six measures. The results showed positive combined effect size estimates in favor of the young adult group (between 0.54 and 3.66 in all measures), although the difference for the mean number of fixations was not significant. Young adults make in a systematic way, shorter gazes, fewer regressions, and shorter saccadic movements during reading than older adults, and they also read faster. The meta-analysis results confirm statistically the most common patterns observed in previous research; therefore, eye movements seem to be a useful tool to measure behavioral changes due to the aging process. Moreover, these results do not allow us to discard either of the two main hypotheses assessed for explaining the observed aging effects, namely neural degenerative problems and the adoption of compensatory strategies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Ramtin Zargari Marandi ◽  
Camilla Ann Fjelsted ◽  
Iris Hrustanovic ◽  
Rikke Dan Olesen ◽  
Parisa Gazerani

The affective dimension of pain contributes to pain perception. Cognitive load may influence pain-related feelings. Eye tracking has proven useful for detecting cognitive load effects objectively by using relevant eye movement characteristics. In this study, we investigated whether eye movement characteristics differ in response to pain-related feelings in the presence of low and high cognitive loads. A set of validated, control, and pain-related sounds were applied to provoke pain-related feelings. Twelve healthy young participants (six females) performed a cognitive task at two load levels, once with the control and once with pain-related sounds in a randomized order. During the tasks, eye movements and task performance were recorded. Afterwards, the participants were asked to fill out questionnaires on their pain perception in response to the applied cognitive loads. Our findings indicate that an increased cognitive load was associated with a decreased saccade peak velocity, saccade frequency, and fixation frequency, as well as an increased fixation duration and pupil dilation range. Among the oculometrics, pain-related feelings were reflected only in the pupillary responses to a low cognitive load. The performance and perceived cognitive load decreased and increased, respectively, with the task load level and were not influenced by the pain-related sounds. Pain-related feelings were lower when performing the task compared with when no task was being performed in an independent group of participants. This might be due to the cognitive engagement during the task. This study demonstrated that cognitive processing could moderate the feelings associated with pain perception.


2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 934-947 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masafumi Ohki ◽  
Hiromasa Kitazawa ◽  
Takahito Hiramatsu ◽  
Kimitake Kaga ◽  
Taiko Kitamura ◽  
...  

The anatomical connection between the frontal eye field and the cerebellar hemispheric lobule VII (H-VII) suggests a potential role of the hemisphere in voluntary eye movement control. To reveal the involvement of the hemisphere in smooth pursuit and saccade control, we made a unilateral lesion around H-VII and examined its effects in three Macaca fuscata that were trained to pursue visually a small target. To the step (3°)-ramp (5–20°/s) target motion, the monkeys usually showed an initial pursuit eye movement at a latency of 80–140 ms and a small catch-up saccade at 140–220 ms that was followed by a postsaccadic pursuit eye movement that roughly matched the ramp target velocity. After unilateral cerebellar hemispheric lesioning, the initial pursuit eye movements were impaired, and the velocities of the postsaccadic pursuit eye movements decreased. The onsets of 5° visually guided saccades to the stationary target were delayed, and their amplitudes showed a tendency of increased trial-to-trial variability but never became hypo- or hypermetric. Similar tendencies were observed in the onsets and amplitudes of catch-up saccades. The adaptation of open-loop smooth pursuit velocity, tested by a step increase in target velocity for a brief period, was impaired. These lesion effects were recognized in all directions, particularly in the ipsiversive direction. A recovery was observed at 4 wk postlesion for some of these lesion effects. These results suggest that the cerebellar hemispheric region around lobule VII is involved in the control of smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Talora L. Martin ◽  
Jordan Murray ◽  
Kiran Garg ◽  
Charles Gallagher ◽  
Aasef G. Shaikh ◽  
...  

AbstractWe evaluated the effects of strabismus repair on fixational eye movements (FEMs) and stereopsis recovery in patients with fusion maldevelopment nystagmus (FMN) and patients without nystagmus. Twenty-one patients with strabismus, twelve with FMN and nine without nystagmus, were tested before and after strabismus repair. Eye-movements were recorded during a gaze-holding task under monocular viewing conditions. Fast (fixational saccades and quick phases of nystagmus) and slow (inter-saccadic drifts and slow phases of nystagmus) FEMs and bivariate contour ellipse area (BCEA) were analyzed in the viewing and non-viewing eye. Strabismus repair improved the angle of strabismus in subjects with and without FMN, however patients without nystagmus were more likely to have improvement in stereoacuity. The fixational saccade amplitudes and intersaccadic drift velocities in both eyes decreased after strabismus repair in subjects without nystagmus. The slow phase velocities were higher in patients with FMN compared to inter-saccadic drifts in patients without nystagmus. There was no change in the BCEA after surgery in either group. In patients without nystagmus, the improvement of the binocular function (stereopsis), as well as decreased fixational saccade amplitude and intersaccadic drift velocity, could be due, at least partially, to central adaptive mechanisms rendered possible by surgical realignment of the eyes. The absence of improvement in patients with FMN post strabismus repair likely suggests the lack of such adaptive mechanisms in patients with early onset infantile strabismus. Assessment of fixation eye movement characteristics can be a useful tool to predict functional improvement post strabismus repair.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document