Affective Medicine: a review of Affective Computing efforts in Medical Informatics

Background: Affective computing (AC) is concerned with emotional interactions performed with and through computers. It is defined as “computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions”. AC enables investigation and understanding of the relation between human emotions and health as well as application of assistive and useful technologies in the medical domain. Objectives: 1) To review the general state of the art in AC and its applications in medicine, and 2) to establish synergies between the research communities of AC and medical informatics. Methods: Aspects related to the human affective state as a determinant of the human health are discussed, coupled with an illustration of significant AC research and related literature output. Moreover, affective communication channels are described and their range of application fields is explored through illustrative examples. Results: The presented conferences, European research projects and research publications illustrate the recent increase of interest in the AC area by the medical community. Tele-home healthcare, AmI, ubiquitous monitoring, e-learning and virtual communities with emotionally expressive characters for elderly or impaired people are few areas where the potential of AC has been realized and applications have emerged. Conclusions: A number of gaps can potentially be overcome through the synergy of AC and medical informatics. The application of AC technologies parallels the advancement of the existing state of the art and the introduction of new methods. The amount of work and projects reviewed in this paper witness an ambitious and optimistic synergetic future of the affective medicine field

Mindfulness Enhancement Model Using Feedback Online Diary to Observe Oneself

In everyday life, facing too many problems has to draw us from being perfect human. So, awareness is necessary to protect one’s life to have a balance livelihood. Mindfulness is working with everything in every moment happening in our life. Being conscious of our thoughts to refrain from bad deeds while holding on to virtues with attentive consciousness of good or bad consequences is regarded as a way of mindfulness training which can be practiced in daily life. This paper would like to propose a mindfulness enhancement model using concrete tool with education theory of Cognitive Constructionism and Learning Diary on Artificial Intelligent (Expert System) infiltrating the feedback of Dhamma, morality or remarks to individual to practice and observe oneself. Keywords: Online diary, Expert system, Mindfulness, Innovation, Self realizatio

Measuring instant emotions based on facial expression during computer-based assessment

Abstract Emotions are very important during learning and assessment procedures. However, measuring emotions is a very demanding task. Several tools have been developed and used for this purpose. In this paper, the efficiency of the FaceReader during a computer-based assessment (CBA) was evaluated. Instant measurements of the FaceReader were compared with the researchers' estimations regarding students' emotions. The observations took place in a properly designed room in real time. Statistical analysis showed that there are some differences between FaceReader's and researchers' estimations regarding Disgusted and Angry emotions. Results showed that FaceReader is capable of measuring emotions with an efficacy of over 87% during a CBA and that it could be successfully integrated into a computer-aided learning system for the purpose of emotion recognition. Moreover, this study provides useful results for the emotional states of students during CBA and learning procedures. This is actually the first time that student's instant emotions were measured during a CBA, based on their facial expressions. Results showed that most of the time students were experiencing Neutral, Angry, and Sad emotions. Furthermore, gender analysis highlights differences between genders' instant emotions

Physiological Sensing for Affective Computing

This thesis addresses two aspects related to enabling systems to recognize the affective state of people and respond sensibly to it. First, the issue of representing affective states and unambiguously assigning physiological measurements to those is addressed by suggesting a new approach based on the dimensional emotion model of valence and arousal. Second, the issue of sensing affect-related physiological data is addressed by suggesting a concept for physiological sensor systems that live up to the requirements of adaptive, user-centred systems.In dieser Arbeit wird ein Konzept zur eindeutigen Zuordnung physiologischer Messdaten zu Emotionszuständen erarbeitet, wobei Probleme klassischer Ansätze hierzu vermieden werden. Des Weiteren widmet sich die Arbeit der Erfassung emotionsbezogener physiologischer Parameter. Es wird ein Konzept für Sensorsysteme vorgestellt, welches die zuverlässige Erfassung relevanter physiologischer Parameter erlaubt, ohne jedoch den Nutzer stark zu beeinträchtigen. Der Schwerpunkt liegt hierbei auf der alltagstauglichen Gestaltung des Systems