Researchers Use XR for Remote Collaborations

VR software and headsets are increasingly being used by researchers to form deeper collaborations or work remotely. VR headsets are used in the School of Pharmacy at the U.K.'s University College London to train students through hands-on experiments in a virtual environment. Researchers at South Africa's University of Pretoria have incorporated XR training tools so engineering students can explore mines, tunnels, and other potentially hazardous spaces virtually.

Medical students at the U.K.'s Cardiff University and the University Hospital of Wales are training to diagnose and treat sepsis using a VR education tool. Virtual reality offers a repeatable, standardized clinical training method that is not reliant on the quality of the trainer. Alongside VR’s potential for training and education, many scientists who use the technology hope that it will one day make their practical work more efficient.

More information:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02688-1

Flamera AR Headset

Meta's Flamera AR headset incorporates a new lens that could eliminate the use of outside cameras to provide wearers with an accurate view of their surroundings. It uses apertures that physically manipulate the light reaching image sensors, blocking light that would distort perspective while allowing light that generates accurate perspective.

Flamera re-configures the raw image to eliminate gaps and rearrange sensor data. It seems to have no latency or difference between eye view and hand position, which could be beneficial for AR applications involving direct user-environment interaction. Accuracy could be a boon for AR applications in which users directly interact with the world around them.

More information:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/meta-flamera

Re-creating Pink Floyd Song from Listeners’ Brain Activity

Scientists have demonstrated that the brain’s electrical activity can be decoded and used to reconstruct music. A new study analyzed data from 29 people who were already being monitored for epileptic seizures using postage-stamp-size arrays of electrodes that were placed directly on the surface of their brain.

As the participants listened to Pink Floyd’s 1979 song “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1,” the electrodes captured the electrical activity of several brain regions attuned to musical elements such as tone, rhythm, harmony and lyrics. Employing machine learning, the researchers reconstructed garbled but distinctive audio of what the participants were hearing.

More information:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neuroscientists-re-create-pink-floyd-song-from-listeners-brain-activity/

Digital Puzzles Help Memory in Elderly

Scientists at the U.K.'s University of York found the memory of adults ages 60 and older who play digital puzzle games is as good as that of people in their 20s. The researchers tested various games parallel to a digital experiment requiring participants to memorize images while being distracted.

However, older people who only played strategy games were more likely to forget elements they memorized while being distracted, and young people were less able to concentrate when playing only puzzle games.

More information:

https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2023/research/digital-puzzle-games-good-for-memory-older-adults/