Extracting Relevance and Affect Information from Physiological Text Annotation

We present physiological text annotation, which refers to the practice of associating physiological responses to text content in order to infer characteristics of the user information needs and affective responses. Text annotation is a laborious task, and implicit feedback has been studied as a way to collect annotations without requiring any explicit action from the user. Previous work has explored behavioral signals, such as clicks or dwell time to automatically infer annotations, and physiological signals have mostly been explored for image or video content. We report on two experiments in which physiological text annotation is studied first to 1) indicate perceived relevance and then to 2) indicate affective responses of the users. The first experiment tackles the user’s perception of relevance of an information item, which is fundamental towards revealing the user’s information needs. The second experiment is then aimed at revealing the user’s affective responses towards a -relevant- text document. Results show that physiological user signals are associated with relevance and affect. In particular, electrodermal activity (EDA) was found to be different when users read relevant content than when they read irrelevant content and was found to be lower when reading texts with negative emotional content than when reading texts with neutral content. Together, the experiments show that physiological text annotation can provide valuable implicit inputs for personalized systems. We discuss how our findings help design personalized systems that can annotate digital content using human physiology without the need for any explicit user interaction

None in Three: The Design and Development of a Low-cost Violence Prevention Game for the Caribbean Region

Domestic violence is a persistent and universal problem occurring in every culture and social group, with lack of empathy identified as a contributing factor. On average, one in three women and girls in the Caribbean experience domestic violence in their lifetime. In this paper we demonstrate the techniques used during the creation of a low-cost, violence prevention game titled None in Three, targeted at enhancing empathy and awareness among young people in Barbados and Grenada. A research trip was undertaken to gather photographic reference and to meet with young people. Methods to measure the emotional state of players and awareness of characters in-game were explored. Cost-saving measures such as asset store purchases were evaluated. Custom tools were created in order to speed up production, including a bespoke event editor for multiple-choice dialogue sequences, and the use of motion capture libraries and auto-rigging tools to speed up character animation workflows

Association of homocysteine and methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR C677T) gene polymorphism with coronary artery disease (CAD) in the population of North India

The implications of the methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene and the level of homocysteine in the pathogenesis of coronary artery disease (CAD) have been extensively studied in various ethnic groups. Our aim was to discover the association of MTHFR (C677T) polymorphism and homocysteine level with CAD in north Indian subjects. The study group consisted of 329 angiographically proven CAD patients, and 331 age and sex matched healthy individuals as controls. MTHFR (C677T) gene polymorphism was detected based on the polymerase chain reaction and restriction digestion with HinfI. Total homocysteine plasma concentration was measured using immunoassay. T allele frequency was found to be significantly higher in patients than in the control group. We found significantly elevated levels of mean homocysteine in the patient group when compared to the control group (p = 0.00). Traditional risk factors such as diabetes, hypertension, smoking habits, a positive family history and lipid profiles (triglyceride, total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, VLDL-cholesterol), were found significantly associated through univariate analysis. Furthermore, multivariable logistics regression analysis revealed that CAD is significantly and variably associated with diabetes, hypertension, smoking, triglycerides and HDL-cholesterol. Our findings showed that MTHFR C677T polymorphism and homocysteine levels were associated with coronary artery disease in the selected population

Effects of music on arousal during imagery in elite shooters: A pilot study

© 2017 Kuan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Beneficial effects of music on several performance-related aspects of sport have been reported, but the processes involved are not well understood. The purpose of the present study was to investigate effects of relaxing and arousing classical music on physiological indicators and subjective perceptions of arousal during imagery of a sport task. First, appropriate music excerpts were selected. Then, 12 skilled shooters performed shooting imagery while listening to the three preselected music excerpts in randomized order. Participants' galvanic skin response, peripheral temperature, and electromyography were monitored during music played concurrently with imagery. Subjective music ratings and physiological measures showed, as hypothesized, that unfamiliar relaxing music was the most relaxing and unfamiliar arousing music was the most arousing. Researchers should examine the impact of unfamiliar relaxing and arousing music played during imagery on subsequent performance in diverse sports. Practitioners can apply unfamiliar relaxing and arousing music with imagery to manipulate arousal level.This present study was support by the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme, Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Malaysia (FRGS/1/2014/SS02/USM/03/1)

AMPD1 gene mutations are associated with obesity and diabetes in Polish patients with cardiovascular diseases

Previous studies showed an association of the common functional polymorphism (C34T, Gln12Stop) in the adenosine monophosphate deaminase-1 (AMPD1) gene with survival in heart failure (HF) and/or coronary artery disease (CAD). The aim of the study was to search for other mutations in selected regions of the AMPD1 gene in Polish CAD and HF patients, and to analyze their associations with obesity and diabetes. Exons 2, 3, 5, and 7 of AMPD1 were scanned for mutations in 97 patients with CAD without HF (CAD+ HF−), 104 patients with HF (HF+), and 200 newborns from North-Western Poland using denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC), polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP), and direct sequencing. Frequencies of AMPD1 C34T mutation, as well as novel A99G, G512A, IVS4-6delT, and C784T sequence alterations, were similar in the three groups, but 860T mutated allele was less frequent in the combined CAD+ HF− and HF+ groups than in the controls (1.7% vs. 4.3%, p = 0.040). Heterozygous 34CT genotype was associated with lower (odds ratio [OR] = 0.32, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.13–0.81) and 860AT with higher (OR = 13.7, 95%CI = 1.6–118) prevalence of diabetes or hyperglycemia in relation to wild-type homozygotes. Abdominal obesity was more frequent in 860AT patients than in wild-type homozygotes and 34CT heterozygotes (86% vs. 40% vs. 29%, p < 0.05). Nine genes containing polymorphisms linked with AMPD1 C34T mutation were found in the HapMap database. AMPD1 C34T nonsense mutation is associated with reduced prevalence of diabetes and obesity in patients with CAD or HF, but A860T substitution seems to exert opposite metabolic effects and should always be accounted for in the studies of the AMPD1 genotype

Locus of emotion influences psychophysiological reactions to music

It is now widely accepted that the perception of emotional expression in music can be vastly different from the feelings evoked by it. However, less understood is how the locus of emotion affects the experience of music, that is how the act of perceiving the emotion in music compares with the act of assessing the emotion induced in the listener by the music. In the current study, we compared these two emotion loci based on the psychophysiological response of 40 participants listening to 32 musical excerpts taken from movie soundtracks. Facial electromyography, skin conductance, respiration and heart rate were continuously measured while participants were required to assess either the emotion expressed by, or the emotion they felt in response to the music. Using linear mixed effects models, we found a higher mean response in psychophysiological measures for the “perceived” than the “felt” task. This result suggested that the focus on one’s self distracts from the music, leading to weaker bodily reactions during the “felt” task. In contrast, paying attention to the expression of the music and consequently to changes in timbre, loudness and harmonic progression enhances bodily reactions. This study has methodological implications for emotion induction research using psychophysiology and the conceptualization of emotion loci. Firstly, different tasks can elicit different psychophysiological responses to the same stimulus and secondly, both tasks elicit bodily responses to music. The latter finding questions the possibility of a listener taking on a purely cognitive mode when evaluating emotion expression

Psychophysiology in games

Psychophysiology is the study of the relationship between psychology and its physiological manifestations. That relationship is of particular importance for both game design and ultimately gameplaying. Players’ psychophysiology offers a gateway towards a better understanding of playing behavior and experience. That knowledge can, in turn, be beneficial for the player as it allows designers to make better games for them; either explicitly by altering the game during play or implicitly during the game design process. This chapter argues for the importance of physiology for the investigation of player affect in games, reviews the current state of the art in sensor technology and outlines the key phases for the application of psychophysiology in games.The work is supported, in part, by the EU-funded FP7 ICT iLearnRWproject (project no: 318803).peer-reviewe

Association of Chromosome 9p21 with Subsequent Coronary Heart Disease events:A GENIUS-CHD study of individual participant data

BACKGROUND:Genetic variation at chromosome 9p21 is a recognized risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD). However, its effect on disease progression and subsequent events is unclear, raising questions about its value for stratification of residual risk. METHODS:A variant at chromosome 9p21 (rs1333049) was tested for association with subsequent events during follow-up in 103,357 Europeans with established CHD at baseline from the GENIUS-CHD Consortium (73.1% male, mean age 62.9 years). The primary outcome, subsequent CHD death or myocardial infarction (CHD death/MI), occurred in 13,040 of the 93,115 participants with available outcome data. Effect estimates were compared to case/control risk obtained from CARDIoGRAMPlusC4D including 47,222 CHD cases and 122,264 controls free of CHD. RESULTS:Meta-analyses revealed no significant association between chromosome 9p21 and the primary outcome of CHD death/MI among those with established CHD at baseline (GENIUS-CHD OR 1.02; 95% CI 0.99-1.05). This contrasted with a strong association in CARDIoGRAMPlusC4D OR 1.20; 95% CI 1.18-1.22; p for interaction Conclusions: In contrast to studies comparing individuals with CHD to disease free controls, we found no clear association between genetic variation at chromosome 9p21 and risk of subsequent acute CHD events when all individuals had CHD at baseline. However, the association with subsequent revascularization may support the postulated mechanism of chromosome 9p21 for promoting atheroma development