A situation-driven framework for relearning of activities of daily living in smart home environments

Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) are sine qua non for self-care and improved quality of life. Self-efficacy is major challenge for seniors with early-stage dementia (ED) when performing daily living activities. ED causes deterioration of cognitive functions and thus impacts aging adults’ functioning initiative and performance of instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). Generally, IADLs requires certain skills in both planning and execution and may involve sequence of steps for aging adults to accomplish their goals. These intricate procedures in IADLs potentially predispose older adults to safety-critical situations with life-threatening consequences. A safety-critical situation is a state or event that potentially constitutes a risk with life-threatening injuries or accidents. To address this problem, a situation-driven framework for relearning of daily living activities in smart home environment is proposed. The framework is composed of three (3) major units namely: a) goal inference unit – leverages a deep learning model to infer human goal in a smart home, b) situation-context generator – responsible for risk mitigation in IADLs, and c) a recommendation unit – to support decision making of aging adults in safety-critical situations. The proposed framework was validated against IADLs dataset collected from a smart home research prototype and the results obtained are promising

Visual processing streams: interactions, impairments and implications for rehabilitation

The present thesis is organized in three sections. Section 1 (chapter 2) provides a general overview of the cortical and subcortical brain structures that are involved in visual processing and the way these systems interact. Three visual streams are described: a ventral, occipitotemporal stream for processing information related to specialized recognition of objects and faces; a dorsal, occipitoparietal stream for processing information related to movement, location and motor action; and a subcortical, cortico-amygdalar and thalamo-amygdalar pathway for processing of emotion-related information. Also, some of the most important visual impairments due to brain damage will be discussed. In section 2 (chapters 3 and 4) rehabilitation methods of damage to specific parts of the visual system will be reviewed. Section 3 (chapters 5, 6 and 7) consists of experimental studies that focus on interactions between overt and covert recognition of faces and emotional facial expressions. Finally, chapter 8 provides a summary of main findings of this thesis, which will be discussed in chapter 9.

Backwards is the way forward: feedback in the cortical hierarchy predicts the expected future

Clark offers a powerful description of the brain as a prediction machine, which offers progress on two distinct levels. First, on an abstract conceptual level, it provides a unifying framework for perception, action, and cognition (including subdivisions such as attention, expectation, and imagination). Second, hierarchical prediction offers progress on a concrete descriptive level for testing and constraining conceptual elements and mechanisms of predictive coding models (estimation of predictions, prediction errors, and internal models)

Experience-based language acquisition: a computational model of human language acquisition

Almost from the very beginning of the digital age, people have sought better ways to communicate with computers. This research investigates how computers might be enabled to understand natural language in a more humanlike way. Based, in part, on cognitive development in infants, we introduce an open computational framework for visual perception and grounded language acquisition called Experience-Based Language Acquisition (EBLA). EBLA can “watch” a series of short videos and acquire a simple language of nouns and verbs corresponding to the objects and object-object relations in those videos. Upon acquiring this protolanguage, EBLA can perform basic scene analysis to generate descriptions of novel videos. The general architecture of EBLA is comprised of three stages: vision processing, entity extraction, and lexical resolution. In the vision processing stage, EBLA processes the individual frames in short videos, using a variation of the mean shift analysis image segmentation algorithm to identify and store information about significant objects. In the entity extraction stage, EBLA abstracts information about the significant objects in each video and the relationships among those objects into internal representations called entities. Finally, in the lexical acquisition stage, EBLA extracts the individual lexemes (words) from simple descriptions of each video and attempts to generate entity-lexeme mappings using an inference technique called cross-situational learning. EBLA is not primed with a base lexicon, so it faces the task of bootstrapping its lexicon from scratch. The performance of EBLA has been evaluated based on acquisition speed and accuracy of scene descriptions. For a test set of simple animations, EBLA had average acquisition success rates as high as 100% and average description success rates as high as 96.7%. For a larger set of real videos, EBLA had average acquisition success rates as high as 95.8% and average description success rates as high as 65.3%. The lower description success rate for the videos is attributed to the wide variance in entities across the videos. While there have been several systems capable of learning object or event labels for videos, EBLA is the first known system to acquire both nouns and verbs using a grounded computer vision system

Improving Interruption Recovery in Human-Supervisory Control (HSC)

Interruptions have negative effects on the task performance in modern work environments. These negative effects are not affordable in tasks in which decisions are time-critical and have a life-critical nature. Human-supervisory control (HSC) tasks in time-critical settings such as mission command and control and emergency response are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of interruptions since supervisors in these settings are prone to frequent interruptions which are valuable source of information and hence cannot be ignored and consequences of a wrong decision in these settings is very costly because of their life-critical nature. To address this issue, this thesis investigates an activity-centric design approach that aims to help team supervisors in a complex mission control operation to remain aware of the activities that most likely would affect their decisions, while minimizing disruption. An interruption recovery assistant (IRA) tool was designed to promote activity and situation awareness of a team of UAV operators in a representative task. Initial pilot studies showed a positive trend in effectiveness of the IRA tool on recovery time and decision accuracy. This thesis explores alternative design approaches to validate the effectiveness of an interruption recovery tool that enable mission commanders rapidly and effectively regain the situational awareness after an interruption occurs in the mission environment. This thesis overview these design approaches and present results from a series of formative evaluations of our prototype designs. These evaluations were conducted in an experimental platform designed to emulate futuristic semi-autonomous UAV team mission operations

Understanding the relationship between chronic pain and emotional disorders

Although frequent coexistence of chronic pain and emotional disorders is well documented, exact mechanisms of comorbidity are not fully understood. The overarching aim of this thesis was to advance our knowledge of the mechanisms that link chronic pain and emotional disorders. Results of the literature review suggest that nosologically different conditions might coexist if they share common transdiagnostic risk factors that predispose individuals to several disorders. Using this transdiagnostic approach, a theoretical model explaining the relationships between different risk factors and how they might contribute to comorbidity between chronic pain and emotional disorders has been developed. According to the proposed model, one of the most fundamental transdiagnostic risk factors associated with both conditions is uncontrollable stress. It does not cause chronic pain or emotional disorders directly but promotes development of other risk factors, such as helplessness, negative affectivity, hypersensitivity to pain, dysregulation of stress response, and cognitive deficits. Importantly, these risk factors are not disorder specific. They equally predispose individuals to depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. Development of a specific disorder is determined by the influence of environmental and biological moderators that transform pre-existing risk factors into specific disorders. Considering that the sequence of pathological processes leading to psychopathology and/or chronic pain starts from the experience of uncontrollable stress, it is important to identify neural mechanisms that could mediate its effects. There is evidence suggesting that the frontal pole comprising of the rostromedial prefrontal cortex (rmPFC) and rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (rlPFC) plays an essential role in evaluation of controllability. Dysfunction of this area may increase the sense of uncontrollability, thereby promoting development of transdiagnostic risk factors. Both subregions of the frontal pole are parts of the neural networks that perform higher-order processing and modulation of nociceptive and emotional reactions. Thus, increased sensitivity to pain and heightened negative affect in patients with chronic pain disorders might be mediated by impaired interaction of the rmPFC and rlPFC with low-level nociceptive and emotional circuits. To test this hypothesis, resting-state functional and effective connectivity of the rmPFC and rlPFC was investigated in two chronic pain conditions: chronic low back pain (CLBP) and osteoarthritis (OA). Functional connectivity (FC) of the rmPFC and rlPFC in CLBP. CLBP patients displayed decreased FC of the rmPFC with retrosplenial cortex (RSC), posterior part of the ventral pallidum (VP), and mediodorsal (MD) thalamus. Diminished interaction with these regions may hinder retrieval of positive episodic memories of control and attribution of positive outcomes to personal actions. This may negatively influence patients’ belief about their ability to cope with stress, increase the sense of perceived uncontrollability. CLBP patients also showed reduced FC of the rmPFC with the medial pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus, midbrain reticular formation, and periaqueductal grey. These structures are parts of the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) that regulates the level of arousal in the central nervous system. Reduced modulation of the arousal system by the rmPFC may result in development of a hyperarousal state and amplification of nociceptive and emotional responses leading to hyperalgesia and increased negative affectivity. There was no difference in FC of the rlPFC between CLBP patients and healthy controls. Effective connectivity analysis in CLBP. Causal interactions between the rmPFC, stress-related brainstem structures (dorsal raphe nucleus, ventral and dorsal periaqueductal grey), and memory systems (ventral striatum, hippocampus, amygdala) were investigated using the spectral dynamic causal modelling (spDCM). Consistent with the results of the FC analysis in CLBP, the spDCM also found altered interaction between the rmPFC and memory systems. Specifically, patients showed weaker connectivity of the rmPFC with hippocampus and stronger connectivity with the amygdala. Such pattern of connectivity may lead to inaccurate evaluation of the probability of control based on past experiences, overgeneralization and impaired extinction of fears. Patients also demonstrated hyperactivation of the dorsal raphe nucleus, ventral and dorsal periaqueductal grey (parts of the ARAS) that may contribute to hyperalgesia and increased negative affectivity. Functional connectivity of the rmPFC and rlPFC in OA. In this study FC of the rmPFC and rlPFC was compared between patients with shorter duration of OA (7 years), and healthy volunteers. Only patients with longer duration of OA showed increased negative FC of the rmPFC with multiple brainstem nuclei, such as the parabrachial complex, locus coeruleus, dorsal and median raphe nuclei, ventral tegmental area, midbrain reticular formation, and periaqueductal grey, that together comprise the ARAS. Negative FC between the rmPFC and ARAS may reflect increased compensatory inhibition of the activating system by the rmPFC in attempts to suppress pain-induced arousal and negative affect. Despite longer duration of pain, patients did not show signs of hyperalgesia or emotional distress. Perhaps, effective suppression of the brainstem arousal system demonstrated by OA patients was due to preserved connectivity between the rmPFC and memory systems. Both groups of OA patients also showed reduced FC of the rlPFC with the multiple demand network that may contribute to development of another transdiagnostic risk factor, i.e., cognitive deficit. Results of all three studies presented in this thesis suggest that chronic stress may cause development of transdiagnostic risk factors such as negative affectivity and hyperalgesia via hyperactivation of the brainstem arousal system that augments nociceptive and emotional responses. Impaired regulation of the arousal system by the rmPFC, which evaluates controllability of the stress based on previous experiences, may contribute to hyperactivation of the ARAS. Reduced interaction between the rmPFC and memory systems may obstruct retrieval and utilization of positive memories of control, thereby increasing the sense of uncontrollability, facilitating hyperarousal, and contributing to development of transdiagnostic risk factors. In contrast, preserved connectivity between the rmPFC and memory systems may oppose the negative effects of chronic stress and help patients to maintain a belief that they are capable of coping with the stress

The Effects of Big Data and Blockchain on the Audit Profession

This qualitative study purposed to gain a greater understanding of the technological systems effecting the audit industry. The central focus was to gain an in-depth understanding of the effects of big data and blockchain technology on the audit industry. Interviews were carried out with selected participants working for Certified Public Accounting (CPA) firms. From the interviews, eleven CPAs provided the data to form the discovered themes. The information gathered in the interviews contributed to the body of knowledge concerning big data and blockchain technology as recognized by practicing CPAs. Four themes were identified which aligned with the participants feedback concerning big data and blockchain effects on the audit. The themes discovered were: the need for additional training to fully prepare for the technological spectrums, a need for software developments beyond the traditional excel applications, having an on-going correspondence with information (IT) technology personnel, and an acknowledgment of the limited practical application of blockchain on the audit. This study shall assist auditors and other stakeholders interested in preparing to work with clients that have big data and/or blockchain technology embedded in their systems