Ten years of "Virtual Reality in Neuroscience Research and Therapy"

Ten years ago today (November 3), me and co-authors Corey Bohil and Frank Biocca published the paper "Virtual Reality in Neuroscience Research and Therapy" in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Happy Birthday, paper!

Click to enlarge.

This article made the issue cover of the containing issue. A closeup of the cover art (below) is entitled "Virtual Reality Reaches New Heights" by Kirsten Lee. Great image of a digital mountain range.

Click to enlarge.

After 10 years, this publication has been cited about 730 times. Even after 10 years, the citation rate per year is still increasing. Not only does the paper cover examples of human engagement with VR, but examples from model organisms as well. This paper is different than many other reviews of VR in that it does not focus on the latest technology, but more fundamental research questions and applications. 

COURTESY: Google Scholar. Click to enlarge.

About four years later, I single-authored a paper at F1000 Research called "Animal-oriented virtual environments: illusion, dilation, and discovery", a paper that delved into speculation about neural mechanisms in model organisms during VR exposure. This was before the current VR hype came of age, so it was tough to find reviewers for this one. Nevertheless, there is much more to explore in this area.

Opening Access, Virtual, Distributed Lab Edition

Welcome to Open Access Week 2021! This year's theme is building structural equity. In the Orthogonal Research and Education Lab and the DevoWorm group, this has been an ongoing priority: from the recruitment of scholars to the production and engagement with research. This week we will highlight some of the ways we open up the research process, and how this is the only way the principles of open access (Figure 1) can be fully realized.

Figure 1. From the short film "What is Open Access" (PhD Comics, 2012).

One thing that enables Open Access is an open collaboration structure. Both Orthogonal Lab and DevoWorm are based on a virtual, distributed framework. People can join in and collaborate as long as they have an internet connection and the initiative to work on a related problem. The communication structure is likewise flexible: you can join in our weekly meetings, participate in our Slack channels or Github teams, or join in on a collaborative doc. We also sponsor or participate in various open educational initiatives. Two of these are Google Summer of Code and Neuromatch Academy.

Figure 2. The global reach (physical and virtual) of the Orthogonal Lab.

This brings together participants from multiple continents and research specialties, while also enabling students, professional academics, and lifelong learners to collaborate in ways large and small. We participate in the academic community through virtual and hybrid conferences, peer-reviewed publication venues, book chapters, and preprints. Self-publication platforms (blogging platforms) and social media are also good for advancing fledgling ideas and chronicling progress. Along with an emphasis on open code and data, these venues are utilized to maximize access and reusability.

More recently, we have been focusing on the role of professional development in enabling the virtual, distributed research process. As many of our contributors aspire to further their research careers through participation, we have become more active in cultivating an individual's research agenda. Between active recruitment of participants and enabling them to take ownership of a research topic, we can contribute to greater equity and diversity in the research enterprise.

            

Finally, our Open Access agenda includes an interdisciplinary focus, as both Orthogonal Lab and DevoWorm engage individuals from a variety of different backgrounds. There is an intentionality towards enabling interdisciplinary skillsets, as well as a focus on providing individuals space to pursue these connections between traditional disciplines. For more information on how these components work to form a virtual, distributed lab, see our preprint "Building a Distributed Virtual Laboratory Adjacent to Academia". 

While there are still many administrative and functional barriers to pursuing this as a full-fledged research organization on par with a large corporation or University, this is a unique and emergent way of opening access. If you would like to participate, please contact us. Additionally, be sure to check out the #OAWeek hashtag for this blog (Synthetic Daisies), as we have content going back to 2016 on a variety of topics. 

OpenWorm Annual Meeting 2021 (DevoWorm update)

This week we had our OpenWorm Annual Meeting for 2021, which featured administrative business as well as updates from our research groups and educational initiatives. Much activity going on inside of the OpenWorm Foundation -- join the OpenWorm Slack or follow OpenWorm on Twitter for more information. Below are the slides I presented on progress and the latest activities in the DevoWorm group. If anything looks interesting to you, and you would like to contribute, please let me know. Click on any slide to enlarge.

The last slide is in recognition of OpenWorm's 10th anniversary, or at least the first release of  OpenWorm 10 years ago this month. Looking forward to what the next 10 years will bring! 

But in terms of what the next month will bring (for DevoWorm), we are hosting our second annual Hacktoberfest! Check out README files in our pinned repositories on DevoLearn and devoworm/digital-bacillaria to get started!

OREL Medium: Trajectories in Cognitive Science Session @ CogSci 2021

 

This content was originally posted to the Orthogonal Research and Education Lab blog on July 30.

Congratulations to Jesse Parent, Avery Lim, Bradly Alicea, and Anusha Sharma for heading up the “Trajectories in Cognitive Science” discussion group, held during the CogSci 2021  conference. The event happened in six parts (which we will recap) and is now on YouTube. We are also archiving the slides and reference list on the Open Science Framework (in progress).

Part I: Frontier Map and Cognitive Futures. Presenter: Jesse Parent.

The first part of the session involved an overview of Frontier Maps and the role of maps and visualizations in understanding how ideas form fields of study. Frontier Maps also enable casual learners to get an intellectual grasp on a certain area of study by learning its history and current trends.

Part II: Adjacent Futures. Presenter: Bradly Alicea.

The second talk was given by Bradly Alicea, and involved introducing the idea of Adjacent Futures, which is based on the notion of the adjacent possible. Our focus was on both the possibilities that define scientific discovery and interdisciplinary exploration and the factors (sometimes quite practical) that block combinatorial discovery that often define the boundaries of a given field.

Part III: The Place of Development in the History of CogSci. Presenters: Jesse Parent and Anusha Sharma.

This session (brought to us by Jesse Parent and Anusha Sharma) covered the rich history of developmental approaches in Cognitive Science, and how development has served as an alternative to the concept of “static adult minds”. The presentation was an in-depth presentation of the review article “The Place of Development in the History of Psychology and Cognitive Science” by Gabriella Airenti (Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 895). In the session, we explored the foundational concepts of Piaget as well as longstanding debates such as nature vs. nurture and representationalism vs. brain function.

Part IV: Neurodiversity and Cognitive Science. Presenter: Jesse Parent.

The fourth presentation was also by Jesse Parent, and covered the role of Neurodiversity in Cognitive Science. This was a short review of a book called “Neurodiversity Studies: a new critical paradigm”. Neurodiversity covers a number of alternative frameworks for understanding human cognition, including but not limited to queer, feminist, and critical race perspectives. Such perspectives contribute not only to the diversity of views in the field, but also lead to novel intellectual trajectories.

Part V: Trajectories of Interest in Developmental Psychobiology. Presenter: Avery Lim.

Avery Lim presented on a number of possible trajectories for developmental psychobiology considered broadly. This possibility space (discussed in Part II) includes building off of the study of phenomenology such as developmental critical periods or computational models of psychophysiology. A number of open questions were also posed that motivated our discussions in Part VI.

Part VI: Open Discussion!

If you are interested in discussing these topics further, you might be interested in joining the Orthogonal Lab Slack or the Computational Critical Periods Discord. You can also catch Saturday Morning NeuroSim weekly on YouTube, or get in contact to get on our mailing list and join in person.

Dispatches from the Emergent Interaction Workshop

 This content has been cross-posted at the Orthogonal Lab Medium.

Last month, the Orthogonal Lab was represented at the Emergent Interaction Workshop (part of SIGCHI 2021). We contributed a paper titled “Allostasis Machines: a model for understanding internal states and technological environments”, with a companion presentation now on YouTube. Thanks go to Bradly Alicea, Daniela Cialfi, Anson Lim, and Jesse Parent for their contribution. We are planning an expanded version of this work with Rishabh Chakraborty that will demonstrate Allostasis Machines as a Reinforcement Learning implementation.

The subtitle of this workshop was “Complexity, Dynamics, and Enaction in HCI”. Therefore, the focus was on advancing measurement and theory, in addition to better characterize complexity in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. The four-hour long session was summarized in our weekly meeting on May 22. I have also provided supplemental readings in four workshop-related categories at the bottom of this post.

Overview of the Emergent Interaction Miro board.

There were six other papers made available before the session. Two of the most interesting to the Orthogonal Lab group are “Fields of Affordances and Human Computer Interaction” by Jelle Bruineberg and “Simulating Social Acceptability With Agent-based Modeling” by Alarith Uhde and Marc Hassenzahl.

The Emergent Interaction utilized Zoom, Slack, and a Miro board to enable discussion during the session. Check out the overview paper titled “Emergent Interaction: Complexity, Dynamics, and Enaction in HCI” for more information.

Testing, 1, 2, Emergent T-shirt….

There were a number of interesting and innovative topics discussed in the workshop. Dynamical approaches came up several times, along with topics such as multifractality, attractor analysis, and co-evolutionary experimental design. For more information regarding the first two topics, check out Alan Dix’s blog on Making Sense of Quantitative Data, and Dan Bennett’s preprint “Multifractal Mice: Measuring Task Engagement and Readiness-to-hand via Hand Movement”.

Tom Froese presented on his Enactive Artificial Intelligence and HCI work. His Google Scholar profile features some really interesting work that cuts across the worlds of Artificial Life, Cybernetics, and Cognitive Science, but his workshop topic was how modern Machine Learning approaches are insufficiently embodied. I have posted references to two of his key works (workshop-wise) in the Further Readings section of this post.

Later, Parisa Eslambolchilar presented on first-order closed-loop feedback taking the form of sensor-based human interaction loops. She reviewed some of the things she developed in her Doctoral dissertation, then lead us into her more recent work. Learn more by reading “A Model-Based Approach to Analysis and Calibration of Sensor-based Human Interaction Loops”.

Then, Vassilis Kostakos discussed his work on modeling interactions between technology users (or users and interfaces) as a complex system. He utilized the “lynx-hare” predator-prey analogy, inspired by Lotka-Volterra co-evolutionary dynamics. Read more in this paper published last year in Human-Computer Interaction: “Modeling interaction as a complex system”.

Emergent Interaction is now on Twitter! Give them a follow to join the discussion.

Further Reading: Measurement techniques.

Rebout, N., Lone, J-C., De Marco, A., Cozzolino, R., Lemasson, A., and Thierry, B. (2021). Measuring complexity in organisms and organizations. Royal Society Open Science, 8, 200895.

Zhou, Q., Chua, C-C., Knibbe, J., Goncalves, J., and Velloso, E. (2021). Dance and Choreography in HCI: A Two-Decade Retrospective. Proceedings of CHI, 262, 1–14. Video

Further Reading: Enactive Approaches to Artificial Systems.

Froese, T. and Ziemke, T. (2009). Enactive artificial intelligence: Investigating the systemic organization of life and mind. Artificial Intelligence, 173, 466–500.

Froese, T., McGann, M., Bigge, W., Spiers, A., and Seth, A.K. (2012). The Enactive Torch: A New Tool for the Science of Perception. IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 5(4), 365–375.

Further Reading: Agent-based Modeling approaches.

Bonabeau, E. (2002). Agent-based modeling: Methods and techniques for
simulating human systems. PNAS, 99(3), 7280–7287.

Grimm, V., Revilla, E., Berger, U., Jeltsch, F., Mooij, W.M., Railsback, S.F., Thulke, H-H., Weiner, J., Wiegand, T., and DeAngelis, D.L. (2005).
Pattern-Oriented Modeling of Agent-Based Complex Systems: Lessons from Ecology. Science, 310, 987.

Further Reading: Criticalities and Characterizing Systems.

Dotov, D.G., Nie, L., and Chemero, A. (2010). A Demonstration of the Transition from Ready-to-Hand to Unready-to-Hand. PLoS One, 5(3), e9433.

Kelso, J.A.S. (2021). Unifying Large-and Small-Scale Theories of Coordination. Entropy, 23(5), 537.