Abstract
The recent development of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) for Virtual Worlds has resulted in a growing interest in realistic visual feedback. In this paper, we investigate the potential role of Virtual Agents in neurofeedback (NF) systems, which constitute an important paradigm for BCI. We discuss the potential of virtual agents to contribute to the success of NF in the specific context of affective BCI. Throughout the paper, we illustrate our presentation with two fully implemented NF prototypes featuring virtual agents. The first is an interactive narrative in which the user empathises with the feature character; the second, an emotion regulation system in which virtual crowd behaviour becomes a metaphor for arousal, as the user attempts to down-regulate their affective state.
Highlights
We have seen a development of synergies between Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) and Virtual Reality applications (Lécuyer et al, 2013)
In this paper we investigate the role of virtual agents in a specific type of affective BCI system based on neurofeedback (NF)
Our objectives were to improve affective interaction in virtual storytelling to incorporate hypotheses from affective filmic theories (Tan, 1996), as we had previously explored passive detection of emotional response (Gilroy et al, 2012) and active speech-based emotional input (Cavazza et al, 2009). This experiment was an effort in unifying the different components of the interactive narrative experience around the concept of empathy: narrative generation is geared towards creating difficult situations for the feature character; empathy in turn determines the user’s emotional response to that situation, and the BCI input attempts to detect user support, using brain signals previously associated with empathy (Light et al, 2009) and amenable to NF (Baehr et al, 2001; Davidson, 2004)
Summary
We have seen a development of synergies between Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) and Virtual Reality applications (Lécuyer et al, 2013). Virtual agents have become an important component of all the above environments, for instance in computer games and interactive narratives (Porteous et al, 2010), with their ability to express and elicit various types of emotions. This makes them of particular relevance to affective BCI (Mühl et al, 2011). In the case of affective BCI, the use of virtual agents could improve the feedback channel, due to their ability to elicit emotional or social responses related to the BCI signal under consideration. The first one implements an empathic BCI within an interactive narrative and the second one uses crowd behaviour as a feedback channel in an emotion regulation application
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