[Dutch-chapter] CFP ACE 2007 Workshop: Playing with your Brain

[A.Nijholt at ewi.utwente.nl]

Call for Workshop Participation

 

 

BRAINPLAY '07: PLAYING WITH YOUR BRAIN

Brain-Computer Interfaces and Games

 

Workshop on June 12th

in Salzburg, Austria

http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/brainplay07

 

held in conjunction with the 4th International Conference on

Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology

http://www.ace2007.org/

 

Aims and goals of the workshop

Advances in cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging technologies
provide us with the increasing ability to interface directly with
activity in the brain. Researchers have begun to use these technologies
to build brain-computer interfaces. In these interfaces, humans
intentionally manipulate their brain activity in order to directly
control a com-puter or physical prostheses. The ability to communicate
and control devices with thought alone has especially high impact for
individuals with reduced capabilities for muscular response. In fact,
applications for patients with severe motor disabilities have been the
driving force of most brain-computer interface research.

Although removing the need for motor movements in computer interfaces is
challeng-ing and rewarding, we believe that the full potential of brain
sensing technologies as an input mechanism lies in the extremely rich
information it could provide about the state of the user. Having access
to this state information is valuable to human-computer interaction
(HCI) researchers and opens up at least three distinct areas of
research:

 

- direct control by thought, that is, inducing thoughts to manipulate
brain activ-ity that can be mapped onto game interaction commands (e.g.,
move cursor, click buttons, control devices);

- determining the cognitive tasks in which the user is involved in order
to evaluate (game) interfaces or game environments;

- using cognitive or affective state of the user to dynamically adapt
the inter-face to the user (e.g., detect frustration or engagement and
provide tailored feedback).

 

Currently there is a development from traditional videogames using
keyboard, mouse or joystick to games that use all kinds of sensors and
algorithms that know about speech characteristics, about facial
expressions, gestures, location and identity of the gamer and even
physiological processes that can be used to adapt or control the game.

The next step in game development is input obtained from the measurement
of brain activity. User-controlled brain activity has been used in games
that involve moving a cursor on the screen or guiding the movements of
an avatar in a virtual environment by imagining these movements.

Relaxation games have been designed and also games that adapt to the
affective state of the user. BCI game research requires the integration
of theoretical research on mul-timodal interaction, intention detection,
affective state and visual attention monitoring, and on-line motion
control, but it also requires the design of several prototypes of games.
These may be games for amusement, but also (serious) games for
educational, training and simulation purposes.

 

We encourage participation from a wide range of disciplines including
Games & En-tertainment Computing, Cognitive Psychology, Human-Computer
Interaction, Affec-tive Computing, and Artificial Intelligence/Machine
Learning. 

 

Submission

Prospective participants will submit a (position) paper outlining their
interest in this topic to anijholt at cs.utwente.nl. The position paper
should be in the conference format (ACM SIG format), which can be found
at http://www.ace2007.org/submissions.html. Recommended length of the
position paper is 2-4 pages. Apart from quality and rele-vance criteria,
papers will also be selected with the additional aim of having a
bal-anced distribution over the themes of the workshop. The workshop
format will include a presentation by each participant and discussion.
We certainly welcome presentations and demonstrations that can be
considered as case studies and experiments. At the end of the workshop
we will discuss a possible publication (special issue or book) devoted
to the topics of this workshop.

 

Important dates:

- 30 March 2007: Submission of position papers

- 15 April 2007: Notification of acceptance

- 20 April 2007: End of early regestration

- June 12th, 2007: workshop

 

Publication

All position papers will be made available at
http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/brainplay07 . The papers will be distributed
during the workshop. During the workshop we will discuss other
possibilities for publication.

 

Workshop Co-Chairs:

Anton Nijholt, CTIT, University of Twente, the Netherlands,
anijholt at cs.utwente.nl

Desney Tan, Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

 

Workshop Programme Committee

Brendan Allison, UC San Diego, USA

Peter Desain. University of Nijmegen, Netherlands

Robert Jacob, Tufts University, Medford, USA

Tan Le, Emotiv Systems Inc., San Francisco, USA

Craig Lindley, Gotland University, Sweden

Peter Werkhoven, TNO, Soesterberg, Netherlands

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