Happy also to chat about our Brain-Body Analysis Special Interest Group (BBSIG) pipelines for preprocessing and analysing ECG, PPG and respiration (soon), openly available and ready-to-use with BIDS data as Jupyter Notebooks 🫀🫁

Work of +20 wonderful collaborators! ✨

📑 Documentation: www.bbsig.de

Our studies confirmed AffectTracker is reliable, with high user experience and low interference. It opens new avenues for linking subjective experience to physiological dynamics. The tool is open-source and available on GitHub!
#OpenScience

AffectTracker allows users to continuously rate their valence and arousal during VR experiences. It features customizable feedback options, including a simplified affect grid and a novel abstract shape ("Flubber"), designed to be intuitive and minimally interfering.

👥An amazing team effort by:
@fra-malandrone.bsky.social
@lucyroe.bsky.social
A. Ciston
@thefirstfloor.bsky.social
A. Villringer
S. Carletto
@michaelgaebler.com

#neuroskyence #vr #emotion #affect #selfreports

The 1-min videos in study 1 are monoscopic, chosen as intermediate stimuli between static images and long videos to extend the classical short event-related stimulus approach. Also finding suitable free videos was challenging. Study 2's 23-min video is stereoscopic, a step further in stimuli type

3️⃣Tool offers a novel way to study affective dynamics with minimal interference, effectively capturing the nuances of subjective experiences. It opens new research opportunities to link affective states with physiological dynamics
🌟Stay tuned for the full paper & we welcome feedback & discussions! 💭

2️⃣Empirically evaluated in 2 studies at 2 sites (Berlin & Torino; N = 134) with both shorter 1-min 360° videos (low affective variability [AV] 〰️) and longer more dynamic 23-min stimulus (high AV 📈)
Both Grid & Flubber ➡️ high user experience 😃 & low interference with the affective experience itself

1️⃣Participants can rate in real-time and continuously, using the touchpad or joystick of a VR controller 🎮(here: HTC Vive Pro). It comprises three customizable feedback options: a simplified affect grid (Grid), an abstract pulsating variant (Flubber), and no visual feedback (Proprioceptive)

👥Together with F.Malandrone @lucyroe.bsky.social A.Ciston @thefirstfloor.bsky.social A.Villringer S.Carletto @michaelgaebler.com
🛠️ Unity prefab: github.com/afourcade/Af...

Title: Real-time continuous rating of affective experience in immersive Virtual Reality

P.361 (Session 1)
@toninfrc.bsky.social

In collaboration with Torino University, we developed a fun and intuitive new tool to record moment-by-moment feelings!

Thank you!

The picture was made using the AI image generator DALL-E3

We contribute to shed light on the complex relationship between emotions & the nervous systems (or MindBrainBody coupling) under naturalistic stimulation. 🌟 Stay tuned for the full paper & we’re very happy about feedback and discussions! 💭
(Illustration: DALL-E3)

However, whole-brain exploratory analyses revealed a temporo-occipital cluster, where higher EA was linked to decreased 🧠➡️🫀  brain-to-heart (gamma→HF-HRV) and increased 🫀➡️🧠heart-to-brain (LF-HRV→gamma) information flow.

4️⃣ Physiological modeling (using a method by @diegocandiar and others) did not provide evidence for our hypothesis that higher EA changes the bidirectional information flow between HF-HRV & posterior alpha power. 🧠🔁🫀