The Status of Research into Intention Recognition

In recent years, service robots have been widely used in many fields, especially for assisting the elderly and disabled. For example, the medical care of patients with Alzheimer's disease has become a worldwide problem. Existing service robots with some intelligence quotient can perform actions that are programmed by a human. However, the robot cannot understand human intentions or communicate with people naturally. Understanding the intent of the service object could allow the robot to provide better service. Therefore, the most critical component of human-computer interactions is intention recognition. There are currently many methods by which intention recognition can be achieved, such as EMG, EOG and EEG. In addition, emotion is one of the important factors during intention recognition, and this has been a breakthrough notion. This chapter summarizes the current status of research into intention recognition and gives a brief description of the relationship between emotion and intention. We hope to provide more ideas for optimizing human-computer interactions.

Transfer of Training between Working Memory Task and Attentional Task

The present studies indicate that training effects in a certain domain may result in the acquired skills being transferred to other domains that require similar abilities. Cognitive training involves structured exercises that are prescribed and undertaken with the purpose of enhancing cognitive abilities, such as attention, memory, and problem solving. In contrast to symptomatic pharmacotherapy, non-pharmacological approaches may further improve patients' situations. Our aim was to summarize the empirical evidence for the rehabilitation of individuals with cognitive disorders by using training tasks to enhance specific cognitive functions to combat against cognitive degradation and transfer the benefits to other widely used domains.

Environmental Landscape Design for Alzheimer's

People suffering from Alzheimer's may feel anxious or unsettled as a result of these symptoms – in particular the decrease in their cognitive abilities and in their ability to take into account new information or external stimuli – as well from the effects of their medications. Because of their sensitivity, such individuals find it difficult to keep up a positive attitude and remain emotionally stable for long: they experience mood swings, and are unable to keep their negative emotions in check. For this reason, the best practice in treatment is to help them maintain a positive view of their lives and balance their emotions, both personally, in terms of keeping their sense of self, and in social environments, where they have to recognize and interact with others. In this way, good environmental landscape design will have an important role to play in improving their quality of life.

The Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease, a common form of dementia, is a type of neurodegenerative disease that affects more than 30% of the population older than 85. Clinically, it is characterized as memory loss and cognitive decline. Pathologically, its symptoms include cerebral atrophy, amyloid plaques and NFTs. Generally, the life expectancy is no more than nine years after the definite diagnosis, and life expectancy exceeds 14 years in only 3% of patients. Presently, there is no effective treatment to stop the process; the only measures we can take are to ease or improve symptoms temporarily. Therefore, it is necessary to diagnosis the disease in the early stage, such as through imaging detection via CT, MRI, PET and MSR, or prediction before the disease (genetic examination). However, literature data have supported the notion that Alzheimer's disease patients show cognitive reserve abilities to some degree. In the future, research perspectives may focus on the cognitive training paradigms in compensatory and restorative strategies.

MRI-Compatible Haptic Stimuli Delivery Systems for Investigating Neural Substrates of Touch

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been widely used to study human tactile perception. To reveal many unsolved problems to human tactile perception, developing complex and fMRI-compatible stimulation devices are crucial for tactile perception research. These stimulation devices, combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), can assist researchers in analyzing human brain activity. Through analyzing human brain activity, researchers can clarify how the human brain controls the body. Meanwhile, these device scan provide the best rehabilitation program for patients. This chapter presents previous fMRI-compatible stimulation devices, including texture stimulation, shape stimulation, vibrotactile stimulation, etc., which involve the hands, face, ears, legs and other parts of the body. In this chapter, we examine the design of the devices in greater detail. Finally, we summarize the characteristics of these devices and create an outlook for future fMRI-compatible devices.

Effects of Visual Contrast on Inverse Effectiveness in Audiovisual Integration

Bimodal audiovisual signals can be detected more quickly and accurately than unimodal visual signals or auditory signals. This beneficial effect is called audiovisual integration. Audiovisual integration has often been described according to the spatial principle, the temporal principle and the inverse effectiveness principle. Inverse effectiveness indicates that the largest audiovisual enhancements are inversely correlated with the strength of the response to unisensory component stimuli; thus, weaker stimuli generate greater enhancement when presented together. In addition, some studies have suggested that the visual contrast feature can modulate audiovisual integration and obtained an inverse relationship between visual contrast and audiovisual integration. This review aims to summarize previous studies and describe the relationship between visual contrast and inverse effectiveness by behavior, ERP and fMRI experimental methods. By summarizing previous studies, we have determined the direction of future work.

Stimulation Devices for Human Haptic Perception and Their Applications in Cranial Nerve Diseases

Tactile perception is a class of complicated sensations that can be divided into categories including concrete pressure, shape, and temperature perception. In different parts of the human body, the distribution of tactile sensitivity clearly differs. Various stimulatory devices are becoming increasingly widely used in studies of human haptic perception. New methods and devices that can be used to explore tactile stimulation are also being developed and have yielded many important results. This paper introduces such tactile stimulation devices, which can be divided into many categories according to qualities, including their geometric properties, temperature, force, and vibration. This article also introduces some devices that can be used to guide clinical diagnosis and treatment. These devices can be used to examine a patient's haptic perception to help the patient's doctors diagnose their illness.

Evaluation of the Relationship between Nutritional Status and Quality of Life among Nursing Home Residents with Alzheimer's Disease

The purpose of this study was to determine nutritional status and its influence on their quality of life in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients with Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) and anthropometric measurements. This study was conducted with 57 Alzheimer type dementia patients between the ages of 52 and 89 who live in nursing homes in Ankara/Turkey. In this study, it was found that the 57.9% of the AD patients were at risk of malnutrition, and that 19.3% were malnourished. Malnutrition risk rises as the length of stay increases (p< .05). A significant correlation between body weight and quality of life as well as one between calf circumference and quality of life was detected (p< .05). In this study, nutrient intake among aged individuals with AD was found unbalanced; a statistically significant correlation between energy / nutrient intake and quality of life also was not detected.

Humanoid Robots

This paper provides a review of humanoid robots and mind control humanoid robots. Information was obtained mainly from journals and conference proceedings on robotics and mind control technology. We primarily focus on providing an overview of commercially available robots and prototype research-stage humanoid robots in addition to mind control humanoid robot systems. First, a history and overview of the humanoid robot is presented. Then, typical mind control humanoid robot systems are described, including the relevant brain-computer interface and the whole control framework. Finally, the remaining research challenges in the field of humanoid robot safety are summarized.

The Present Visual Equipment System and Its Application in fMRI

The visual system is the part of the central nervous system that gives organisms the ability to process visual details and enables the formation of several non-image photo response functions. It detects and explains information from visible by the light to build a representation of the surrounding environment. One reason why the visual system is so important is that it enables us to perceive information at a distance. We need not be in immediate contact with a stimulus to process it. We must experiment with visual equipment to understand how we process visual information. This article summarizes current visual system equipment and how this equipment can be used to determine how the visual system functions.