End-User-Development for Smart Homes: Relevance and Challenges

International audienceUbiquitous computing is now mature enough to unleash the potential of Smart Homes. The obstacle is no more about hardware concerns but lies in how inhabitants can build, configure and control their Smart Home. In this paper, we defend the idea that End-User-Development (EUD), which considers inhabitants as makers rather than mere consumers, is an effective approach for tackling this obstacle. We reflect on the lifecycle of devices and services to discuss challenges that EUD system will have to address in the Smart Home context: installation and maintenance, designation, control, development (including programming, testing, and reusing), and sharing

End-User-Development for Smart Homes: Relevance and Challenges

International audienceUbiquitous computing is now mature enough to unleash the potential of Smart Homes. The obstacle is no more about hardware concerns but lies in how inhabitants can build, configure and control their Smart Home. In this paper, we defend the idea that End-User-Development (EUD), which considers inhabitants as makers rather than mere consumers, is an effective approach for tackling this obstacle. We reflect on the lifecycle of devices and services to discuss challenges that EUD system will have to address in the Smart Home context: installation and maintenance, designation, control, development (including programming, testing, and reusing), and sharing

Present eternity : quests of temporality in the literary production of the "extrême contemporain" in France (The Writings of Dominique Fourcade and Emmanuel Hocquard)

The term \uab extr\ueame contemporain \ubb is an expression currently used by scholars to indicate the French literary production of the last 20 years. This term was used in a work of literature for the first time by the French poet Dominique Fourcade in 1986 (\uc9l\ue9gie L apostrophe E.C.) in reference to an epoch, but also to a new sense of experiencing time and space in the so-called \uab age of digital reproducibility \ubb. The aim of this paper is to consider how the change in temporal protocols due to the triumph of Big Optics (Paul Virilio) affects the sense of teleology (destiny) and the quest for experience in French contemporary poetry (in particular, in the genre of the elegy). Including both memory and anticipation, the \uab extr\ueame contemporain \ubb production seems to prefer the \u201ctime of now\u201d, Jetz-zeit in Benjamin\u2019s words, to past or testimony, and speaks to the present, whose responsibility is to give voice to a space where everything is simply allowed to happen

Mutual Mate Choice: When it Pays Both Sexes to Avoid Inbreeding

Theoretical models of sexual selection predict that both males and females of many species should benefit by selecting their mating partners. However, empirical evidence testing and validating this prediction is scarce. In particular, whereas inbreeding avoidance is expected to induce sexual conflicts, in some cases both partners could benefit by acting in concert and exerting mutual mate choice for non-assortative pairings. We tested this prediction with the gregarious cockroach Blattella germanica (L.). We demonstrated that males and females base their mate choice on different criteria and that choice occurs at different steps during the mating sequence. Males assess their relatedness to females through antennal contacts before deciding to court preferentially non-siblings. Conversely, females biased their choice towards the most vigorously courting males that happened to be non-siblings. This study is the first to demonstrate mutual mate choice leading to close inbreeding avoidance. The fact that outbred pairs were more fertile than inbred pairs strongly supports the adaptive value of this mating system, which includes no “best phenotype” as the quality of two mating partners is primarily linked to their relatedness. We discuss the implications of our results in the light of inbreeding conflict models

Nociception, Pain and Mechanisms of Modulation

Pain is a complex experience resulting from the integration of several dimensions such as sensory, emotional, affective and contextual. Regarding the sensory aspect, pain may result from the activation of peripheral receptors called nociceptors, which are activated by different types of potentially harmful stimuli. The nociceptive information is then interpreted at the central level and may lead – but not necessarily – to a conscious percept of pain. The term nociception refers to the neuronal encoding and processing of the activity resulting from the activation of these nociceptors while pain results from the integration and interpretation of many dimensions beyond nociception. Therefore, there is a dissociation between nociceptive activity and pain perception. In other words, the central processing and interpretation of a nociceptive stimulus highly depends on cognitive factors such as expectation, attention and past experiences and does not unequivocally lead to the perception of pain. During this presentation, I will first start with a brief recap of the neurophysiological basis of nociception and acute pain and discuss the mechanisms of pain modulation that take place at different level of the nociceptive system. I will describe several recent experiments that have shed light on the complexity of these mechanisms. Then, I will address some aspects of the cerebral modifications thought to be related to chronic pain. To conclude, research perspectives will be discussed

Low-frequency activity as a privileged neural support of temporal integration in auditory versus vibrotactile rhythm

Meter perception in music requires integration of event times to form internal higher-order metrical structures. Meter perception is thus often assumed to be invariant to acoustic attributes following the onset. Here, we challenge this view by showing that, beyond onset timing, the shape of stimulus events may play a role in brain and behavioural entrainment to the meter. We recorded the EEG of volunteers while exposed to acoustic or vibrotactile rhythms either conveyed by long or short shapes of stimulus event. In a separate session, we measured participants' motor entrainment to the meter using finger tapping to the same rhythms. We used acoustic or vibrotactile rhythms, given their similar physical characteristics and often-concomitant occurrence in musical contexts. Neural responses to auditory rhythms were characterized by prominent representation of the meter especially in the low-frequency range (<10Hz), despite lack of prominent metrical structure in the input. This effect was increased with longer sound shape, which also increased stability at tapping the meter. Significant neural responses to vibrotactile rhythms were also elicited. However, these responses, spread over a broader frequency range (<30Hz), did not exhibit significant representation of the meter, in line with poorer tapping performance. Together, these findings indicate spontaneous ability of the auditory system to generate endogenous neural activity selectively in the low-frequency range. This activity could support temporal integration at larger timescales necessary to behaviour-relevant internal representations such as meter. In contrast, faithful tracking of the stimulus by the somatosensory system may not permit temporal integration beyond onset timing

Nociception, Pain and Mechanisms of Modulation

Pain is a complex experience resulting from the integration of several dimensions such as sensory, emotional, affective and contextual. Regarding the sensory aspect, pain may result from the activation of peripheral receptors called nociceptors, which are activated by different types of potentially harmful stimuli. The nociceptive information is then interpreted at the central level and may lead – but not necessarily – to a conscious percept of pain. The term nociception refers to the neuronal encoding and processing of the activity resulting from the activation of these nociceptors while pain results from the integration and interpretation of many dimensions beyond nociception. Therefore, there is a dissociation between nociceptive activity and pain perception. In other words, the central processing and interpretation of a nociceptive stimulus highly depends on cognitive factors such as expectation, attention and past experiences and does not unequivocally lead to the perception of pain. During this presentation, I will first start with a brief recap of the neurophysiological basis of nociception and acute pain and discuss the mechanisms of pain modulation that take place at different level of the nociceptive system. I will describe several recent experiments that have shed light on the complexity of these mechanisms. Then, I will address some aspects of the cerebral modifications thought to be related to chronic pain. To conclude, research perspectives will be discussed

Investigation of baseline EEG features and persistent postoperative pain

resting state EEG markers of the development of persistent postoperative pai

Feeling or listening to musical rhythm: behavioural and neural responses to tactile and acoustic rhythm

The propensity of humans to synchronize body movements along with musical rhythm has been attributed to a close coupling of the auditory and motor systems. The ability of the auditory system to integrate information at different time scales which is critical for speech is thought to be key in audiomotor entrainment. How other sensory systems integrate temporal structures from sub-second to supra-second scales remains largely unknown. Moreover, discrepant results have been reported so far on the performance of sensorimotor synchronization to rhythm across sensory modalities (such as visual or tactile). In addition, the characterisation of the neural activity that underpins the perception of rhythm required to ensure an accurate movement coordination in different sensory modalities is lacking. Here, we investigated the processing of rhythm conveyed with acoustic or vibrotactile inputs, given the similar physical characteristics of these inputs and their often concomitant production in musical contexts. We recorded the electroencephalogram (EEG) in 45 healthy volunteers when exposed – without moving – to acoustic or vibrotactile rhythm. In a separate session, we measured their ability to overt synchronization to the same stimuli using a finger tapping task. The rhythmic input consisted of a repeated pattern known to elicit perception of periodic pulse-like beats when presented in the auditory modality. Moreover, previous studies have shown that neural responses to this rhythm is enhanced at frequencies corresponding to the perceived beats, although the beat frequencies are not prominent in the physical structure of the input. This enhanced neural representation of the beat frequencies is thought to be related to stability of internal representation of the beats perceived by the participants. At the behavioural level, the stability and precision of synchronization was significantly higher in the auditory modality, even though the perceived beat was not significantly different between modalities. Similarly, at the brain level, we observed a significant enhancement of frequencies related to the perceived beat in the auditory modality but not in the somatosensory modality. Importantly, the main difference between the two modalities was found close and within the supra-second range, namely with larger amplitude at the slowest frequencies elicited by the rhythm in the auditory condition compared to touch. These results suggest that slow fluctuations in brain responses to rhythm may be a property enabling the auditory system to integrate incoming signal at different time scales, which is critical for rhythm perception and synchronization. In contrast, in other sensory modalities such as touch, brain responses would closely track each individual event in the stimulus without generating slow fluctuations. This lower propensity for temporal integration could explain general lower stability in motor entrainment to tactile rhythm as compared to auditory rhythm

Combining focused neuromodulation with functional neuroimaging to characterize nociceptive processing in the central nervous system

This project aimed to characterize, in healthy humans, the involvement of two particular brain regions: the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and the insular cortex, in nociception and pain perception. To achieve this goal, I combined functional neuroimaging (electroencephalography or functional magnetic resonance imaging, to sample brain responses to somatosensory inputs) with non-invasive focused neuromodulation (transcranial direct current stimulation or repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, to affect temporarily a brain area). I showed that S1 constitutes an obligatory relay for tactile input – supporting the serial model of tactile processing – and is differentially involved in touch and nociception. I highlighted a predominant role of the insula in the detection of potentially harmful stimuli. Besides the involvement of these cortical regions in the early stages of somatosensory processing, S1 and the insula seem to play different roles throughout the processing of touch and thermo-nociception.(BIFA - Sciences biomédicales et pharmaceutiques) -- UCL, 201