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In our modern world, the question of optimization is recurrent. A lot of the problems we are facing are linked to a non-optimization of the available resources. That is of course true if we take the example of health systems. But it is also true in the way we develop research. In both case, adequate design of strategies is a way to reach optimal results. If we consider doing an experimental research, taking some time to think seriously on the experimental design is always good. The more time we spend on it, the more likely the experiment is going to be good. Thinking about all the possible controls, the alternative hypothesis (and the way to rule them out) ... all that is not a waste of time. Rather, it insures that when you do the actual experiments, you need only to do "slight adaptations" in the process, and not fully rethink your whole experiments ! In health system too, good design of strategies can be valuable. In the last review on tinnitus (Guitton, Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 2012, see the Publication list for the pdf), I spend some time discussing some points on design of therapeutic strategies. Here too, we do have a lot of tools in modern medicine, but are we using them in the most appropriate and efficient way ? Are we orienting medical research in the optimal direction to insure reliable translational outcomes ? (I am using intentionally this "translational" word, since it is obviously a fashionable word now, if we look at the budget orientation of the funding agencies of Canada for the coming years ... and with some reasons actually, since, indeed, we are at a point where we do need to translate the results gathered in fundamental science into clinical applications). All in all, strategies are important, and thinking about which one we use is central if we want to successfully apply the knowledge we generate with our research.

Lab Update: Our new toy !

Scientists are like small boys : they are very happy when you give them a new toy ! Well, here is the new toy we will be buying in the coming days J



A Brüel & Kjaer Sound Level Meter 2250 ... the top of the top in measurement of acoustical backnoise. This sound level meter will complement our already pretty well equiped lab of bioacoustics. The coming projects are going to be very interesting I think !

On another topic, I am going to be at the PCA/ACA meeting next week in Boston. It is a very "eclectic" conference, but I think it will be highly interesting. I will be specifically presenting results from the virtual role-play communities of Second Life (this time, about the "Hutt Space" of the Second Life Star Wars Role-Play community). We will be discussing as well with some other people about some theoretical aspects of virtual community managements (among other things). Second Life really provides fascinating models to study cyberbehavior. The communities of Second Life are relatively easy to penetrate (open-minded and nice people, willing to share their interests and so on ...), and do represent interesting examples of social dynamics in virtual spaces. So far, we have 3 papers published using Second Life as a model, but I think more will come soon. Doesn't mean we are not looking at other virtual communities or virtual spaces, however J Anyway, something which is interesting with Second Life communities is the management of the so-called "drama" (particularly marked in the "role-play" environments, such as the Gorean community, or the SWRP community). Witnessing it - how people create it, how people deal with it, and how it has long-term effect on a community - is very informative. Still trying to find ways to quantify this phenomenon a bit more seriously ... not sure we will be going there, but well, why not ? Anybody has an idea on that ?

Lab Update

I am presently preparing the visit of Sergey Kapishnikov (from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel), who will be visiting my lab in May. He will give a talk on new way to do high-resolution bio-imagery using X-rays ... something which could have some amazing potential in studying vestibular system. Exam period is coming soon, so my hard-working undergraduate students are focusing on their courses now, but when exams will be done, we are going to have a lot of interesting results, since both Marie-Ève and Charlotte's projects are advancing in very promising ways ! Talking about students' work, we submitted last week another paper with Catherine ... so, things are advancing !

Lab Update

Long time I did not post something ... Well, a lot of things going on around, not enough time to write ! The first months of this year have been very intense, but good things are coming. On future developments of the lab : we are again having human subjects on a very interesting series of collaborative works with the newly established lab of Pascale Tremblay (Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of Laval University), we are developing new projects on mutli-modal and/or sensory integration in virtual spaces (some preliminary data already, extending our themes from avatars in virtual worlds to other cyberspaces such as the blogosphere and to web-forums, we will have a presentation on that next month with Lynn Koller (from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University) in the PCA/ACA annual meeting in Boston). We did last week our first joined group meeting with the lab of Philip Jackson (School of Psychology, Laval University) ... that went pretty well actually, such things will reinforce the "avatar group" of Laval University.

I am pretty happy with my present team, but since we are asking more money, and having much more ideas to test, we have positions opened for promising students !

Lab Update

To begin the new year, some good news for us.

First, welcome to two new lab members, Marie-Ève Arsenault and Charlotte Kemp. Welcome aboard !

Second, today two of our papers got published in the last issue of Computers in Human Behavior : the paper of Anna on spatial distribution of avatars in virtual spaces, using Second Life as a model (Lomanowska AM, Guitton MJ (2012) Spatial proximity to others determines how humans inhabit virtual worlds. Computers in Human Behavior, 28 : 318-323. [PDF]); and the paper on the impact of meta-media on immersive behavior, also using Second Life as a model, but analyzing the interactions between a meta-media (a media over a media, in this case a blog relating the events taking place in the virtual community of Star Wars Role-Play, all "in character", "GNN" (Galactic News Network) ... an amazing work of two avatars by the way, Daana Kira and Rakiko Lowtide) and the virtual world on which the meta-media is based (i.e., in this case the Second Life Star Wars Role-Play community) (Guitton MJ (2012) The immersive impact of meta-media in a virtual world. Computers in Human Behavior, 28 : 450-455. [PDF]).

With the new year, some new resolutions ! So, for all students (anywhere in the world, not specific to my lab) and for researchers alike, we should read more papers. To help you in that, my two Twitter account are here ! First, my main Twitter account :

There, I post very regularly links to papers, small comments, and so on ... Honestly, a "must follow" I think ... objectively, really ! Most papers suggested there will deal with virtual reality, augmented reality, social media, bionics, or papers of general interest ... But need to check regularly, I do update the "things to read" rather often.

Second, my second Twitter account, which is in French and supposed to be a support for the courses I teach. So, it is a bit more specific, but still. At the beginning of each post, there is the code of the course (Laval University codes, it is where I teach mostly). Some links are worth a look, for instance the one I suggest for the course NRB-7008 (Neuroscience II) on the auditory system.

Most of the posts however refer to the courses I teach to the ORL Residents (with the code ORL-X). Among those posts, I do some "suggesting reading", which are (obviously) aimed and centered around oto-rhino-laryngology. However, I think the suggested papers could be of interest for other as well. So, possible to have a look there too :

And once again, a Happy New Year 2012 !

Happy New Year 2012 !

Almost the end of the year ... and the beginning of next one ! One year that this blog is active, and so far, I think it is a good experience, even if I was publishing less and less materials, especially since I began to use Twitter. Anyway, this past year has been very fruitful, a lot of good things came out, a lot of ideas, some new amazing collaborations, a lot of promises for the future ... and this coming years is beginning with excellent signs:  new lab members, several papers and book chapters in press, several paper in writing process, a lot of new ideas to test ...

In the coming months, I will be writing few posts here on the general design thematic. It seems I am having a growing interest in that topic, after the last year conference on Design Principles and Practices in Rome (related paper [PDF]), and after my visit at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. But this interest was coming from earlier on, definitively. So, some posts in the coming future will be on video games design, and particularly on how our work can be useful for that ([PDF], [PDF], [PDF], [PDF], [PDF]); and some will be on clinical design, including, but not limited to, drug design ([PDF]) and general clinical strategies with special emphasis on tele-medicine.

But for now, let's enjoy the last days of the year,

I wish you all a Happy New Year 2012 !

Research Update

Several of our works on virtual spaces are going on their way. The paper on distribution of avatars in space is now available online (In Press, still, but should be in the next issue of Computers in Human Behavior), and I got today the proofs of the paper on the impact of meta-media on virtual communities. Looking very good ! Using as a model the Star Wars Role-Play community of Second Life, this paper analysed the impact of "Galactic News Network", a news-styled blog relating the events taking place in the SWRP community of Second Life in a "in character" immersive way, on the community itself, using as a theoretical framework the 3C model I presented in previous work. Interestingly, the typological analysis of what I described in this paper really reinforce the model I think. Big thanks for Daana Kira and Rakiko Lowtide, the two main "Reporters" of GNN, without whom I would not have been able to do this work.

On the other side of our research ... we are launching a series of new projects on bionics. And that makes me happy, as (as I kept telling to people), we are finally linking the two parts of human-machine interactions : the behavioral aspects with virtual spaces, and the fundamental biomedical aspects, with bionic applications, which could only arise from animal research. It will take time, but we are going there finally !