What I do

My research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, Information Visualization and Data Analysis, User Experience Modeling, Reflective technologies, Interpretation systems, or Document and Knowledge Engineering. Application domains are related to education, culture, health, humanities… I focus on interdisciplinary approaches for the study of human-machine coupling and co-development and collaborate with people from sociology, psychology, ergonomy, anthropology, education science, philosophy, design, medecine, focusing on real world activities.

News (all)

Jan. 23: Use of Virtual Reality for Evaluating Cognitive Functions for Diagnosis in Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology. Toinon Vigier and I were invited at the one week Phiteco (Philosophy Technology Cognition) seminar for a presentation of our work in psychotherapy and virtual reality. The seminar was recorded (in french)

Nov. 22: Workshop - Patient Experience and Experiential Knowledge -. The PEEL (Patient Experience Evaluation Lab) that I co-lead organized a one day workshop on patient experience and experiential knowledge, with 3 keynotes speakers, 2 panels, and the presentations of several projects we carry in Nantes. Everything was recorded and is available on YouTube available on YouTube (in french)

Dec. 20: PhD Thesis Defense on Progressive Analytics. Vincent Raveneau has successfully defended his thesis on Progressive Pattern mining, the source code of the tool he built is available as open source. A dedicated webpage is available with all the information (manuscript, slides, source code, etc.

Recent publications (all)

Roman Malo, Yannick Prié. (2023) L’entretien d’explicitation comme outil d’investigation des processus psychiques en contexte expérimental : l’exemple de la flexibilité psychologique in Expliciter - Hors-série 1 - Actes du colloque Pierre Vermersch, March 2023, pp 197-212. Show abstract Le travail que nous présentons ici est au croisement de la psychologie clinique et des sciences cognitives, dont l’enjeu est de proposer une investigation centrée subjectivité d’un processus psychologique. Il s’agit de souligner l’importance de l’expérience vécue explicitée pour affiner la compréhension des processus psychologiques, en prenant ici comme exemple la notion de flexibilité psychologique. Nous décrivons d’abord le “retour” du phénoménologique dans les modèles en psychologie actuelle dans un bref aperçu théorique, puis nous présentons des résultats du projet HOMERIC qui enrichissent notre compréhension du processus complexe qu’est la flexibilité en nous appuyant sur l’entretien d’explicitation comme outil mobilisé dans l’étude d’une situation expérimentale.

Samuel Bulteau, Andrew Laurin, Kalyane Bach-Ngohou, Morgane Péré, Marie-Anne Vibet, Jean-Benoit Hardouin, Véronique Sebille, Lydie Lagalice, Élodie Faurel-Paul, Didier Acier, Thomas Rabeyron, Valéry-Pierre Riche, Anne Sauvaget, Florian Melki, Toinon Vigier, Matthieu Perreira Da Silva, Olivier Charlet, Yannick Prié. (2022) Feasibility of combining transcranial direct current stimulation and full embodied virtual reality for visual height intolerance: a double-blind randomized controlled study in Journal of Clinical Medecine 2022, 11(2), 345; doi Show abstract Background: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) may be used to reduce anxiety in visual height intolerance (vHI). Objective/Hypothesis: Our study aims to in-vestigate the feasibility of the association between wireless tDCS and full embodied 360° VRET to reduce anxiety in vHI. Methods: We carried out a randomized, double-blind, controlled study to associate VRET with tDCS by targeting the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in 28 participants. Primary outcomes were the sense of presence level and the tolerability. Secondary outcomes were the anxiety severity and the salivary cortisol concentration. Results: We confirmed the feasibility of the association tDCS+VRET with a good sense of presence without severe adverse effect. tDCS was not superior to sham to reduce anxiety. We observed in two groups a significant reduction of anxiety after stimulations but a significant increase in anxiety at each level of difficulty. Cortisol concentration significantly decreased in the sham group but remained stable in the tDCS group. Conclusion: Our study confirms the feasibility of the association between wireless tDCS and full embodied VRET with a validated environment to induce anxiety. Effects of VRET seem to be stronger than tDCS effects.

Euisung Kim, Jieun Han, Hojin Choi, Yannick Prié, Toinon Vigier, Samuel Bulteau, Gyu Hyun Kwon. (2021) Examining the Academic Trends in Neuropsychological Tests for Executive Functions Using Virtual Reality: Systematic Literature Review in JMIR Serious Games 2021;9(4):e30249 doi Show abstract Background: In neuropsychology, fully immersive virtual reality (VR) has been spotlighted as a promising tool. It is considered that VR not only overcomes the existing limitation of neuropsychological tests but is also appropriate for treating executive functions (EFs) within activities of daily living (ADL) due to its high ecological validity. While fully immersive VR offers new possibilities of neuropsychological tests, there are few studies that overview the intellectual landscape and academic trends in the research related to mainly targeted EFs with fully immersive VR. Objective: The objective of this study is to get an overview of the research trends that use VR in neuropsychological tests and to analyze the research trends using fully immersive VR neuropsychological tests with experimental articles. Methods: This review was carried out according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Articles were searched in three web databases using keywords related to VR, EFs, and cognitive abilities. The study was conducted in two steps, keyword analysis and in-depth systematic review. In the web database search from 2000 to 2019, 1167 articles were initially collected, of which 234 articles in the eligibility phase were used to conduct keyword analysis and a total of 47 articles were included for systematic review. Results: In keyword analysis, the number of articles focused on dementia including the keywords “MCI,” “SCD,” and “dementia” were highlighted over the period, rather than other symptoms. In addition, we identified that the use of behavioral and physiological data in virtual environments (VEs) has dramatically increased in recent studies. In the systematic review, we focused on the purpose of study, assessment, treatment, and validation of usability and structure. We found that treatment studies and uncategorized studies including presence and cybersickness issues have emerged in the recent period. In addition, the target symptoms and range of participants were diversified. Conclusions: There has been a continuously increasing interest in dealing with neuropsychology by using fully immersive VR. Target cognitive abilities have been diversified, as well as target symptoms. Moreover, the concept of embodied cognition was transplanted in this research area.

Nicolas Ribeiro, Toinon Vigier, Yannick Prié. (2021) Tracking motor activity in Virtual Reality to reveal cognitive functioning: A preliminary study in International Journal of Virtual Reality, 21(1), 30-46. doi Show abstract A challenge for cognitive research is the better understanding of how motor activity influences and is influenced by other cognitive domains. We developed a preliminary study to investigate whether tracking motor functioning in virtual reality provides useful insight on cognitive functioning. We chose the flankers task as an assessment measure and built a VR environment into which seven participants completed more than 1250 trials. In addition to classical results of the flankers task showing that incongruent stimuli induce slower responses than others., we also identified how individuals are able to correct their initially incorrect motor response. This indicator may shed new light into the functioning of cognitive control in the future. We discuss the potential offered by virtual reality technology for cognitive assessment through embodied considerations of cognition.