Non-verbal Communication Tool Research Articles

A brain-computer interface for potential non-verbal facial communication based on EEG signals related to specific emotions.

Unlike assistive technology for verbal communication, the brain-machine or brain-computer interface (BMI/BCI) has not been established as a non-verbal communication tool for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients. Face-to-face communication enables access to rich emotional information, but individuals suffering from neurological disorders, such as ALS and autism, may not express their emotions or communicate their negative feelings. Although emotions may be inferred by looking at facial expressions, emotional prediction for neutral faces necessitates advanced judgment. The process that underlies brain neuronal responses to neutral faces and causes emotional changes remains unknown. To address this problem, therefore, this study attempted to decode conditioned emotional reactions to neutral face stimuli. This direction was motivated by the assumption that if electroencephalogram (EEG) signals can be used to detect patients' emotional responses to specific inexpressive faces, the results could be incorporated into the design and development of BMI/BCI-based non-verbal communication tools. To these ends, this study investigated how a neutral face associated with a negative emotion modulates rapid central responses in face processing and then identified cortical activities. The conditioned neutral face-triggered event-related potentials that originated from the posterior temporal lobe statistically significantly changed during late face processing (600–700 ms) after stimulus, rather than in early face processing activities, such as P1 and N170 responses. Source localization revealed that the conditioned neutral faces increased activity in the right fusiform gyrus (FG). This study also developed an efficient method for detecting implicit negative emotional responses to specific faces by using EEG signals. A classification method based on a support vector machine enables the easy classification of neutral faces that trigger specific individual emotions. In accordance with this classification, a face on a computer morphs into a sad or displeased countenance. The proposed method could be incorporated as a part of non-verbal communication tools to enable emotional expression.

Visualization of advertising media text on TV channels’ websites: creative technologies

The article examines the processes of transition to multimedia broadcasting platforms in the Internet introducing creative technology of advertising media text visualization to a new level. Present-day creative technologies provide non-standard use of verbal and nonverbal communication tools driving the audience to advertising media copies. The problem of studying creative technologies of advertising media copy visualization for channel websites is actually underexplored. Nevertheless a new trend in advertising visualization of ad units and messages in the Internet demands of manufacturers pooled knowledge of the advertising product displayed. Thus conventional terrestrial channels acquire both a new business assignment and additional financial support. The article provides theoretical justification of basic concepts, that is "creativity", "creative idea" and "creative technology." Basic elements dominating in development of visualized advertising are distinguished as the guidelines for creative technologies of advertising media text visualization on channel websites, including an exclusive style and advertising image formation technology. Media content of websites of 6 federal (national) TV channels included in the 1st and 2nd multiplexes of interactive digital television in Russia is specially scrutinized as a potent fact. Multimedia broadcasting platforms are shaped in the new informative and communicative environment conditioned by rapidly progressing innovative technologies, which renders to creative technologies of advertising media text visualization both dynamics of transformations and additional advertising product properties: multimediacity, interactivity, onlinity and hypertextuality.