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)

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.

Nov. 20: Postdoc in France (18 months) - Executive Function testing in Virtual Reality. Within an ongoing collaboration between and Nantes Universities, Hanyang and Nantes University Hospitals, on the use of VR environments for the testing of executive functions in VR, the candidate will design and develop a new integrated VR environment, design an experimental protocol that will be run both in France and Korea. (more info)

Nov. 19: Postdoc position in Immersive Analytics (6-7 months from Jan. 202O). The candidate will extend the work we have been carrying on how to visualize and interact with 3D scatterplots in Virtual Reality. His/her first task is to develop an experiment that aims to compare two types of data immersion. Other tasks and research directions will depend on personal interest of the candidate. (more info)

Recent publications (all)

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.

Madjid Sadallah, Benoît Encelle, Azze-Eddine Maredj, Yannick Prié. (2020) Towards fine-grained reading dashboards for online course revision in Educational Technology Research and Development, 22p doi Show abstract Providing high-quality courses is of utmost importance to drive successful learning. This compels course authors to continuously review their contents to meet learners’ needs. However, it is challenging for them to detect the reading barriers that learners face with content, and to identify how their courses can be improved accordingly. In this paper, we propose a learning analytics approach for assisting course authors performing these tasks. Using logs of learners’ activity, a set of indicators related to course reading activity are computed and used to detect issues and to suggest content revisions. The results are presented to authors through CoReaDa, a learning dashboard empowered with assistive features. We instantiate our proposals using the logs of a major European e-learning platform, and validate them through a study. Study results show the effectiveness of our approach providing authors with more awareness and guidance in improving their courses, to better suit learners’ requirements.