Enhancing Social Interaction With an AlterEgo Artificial Agent

Not Applicable

• Conditions: Schizophrenia
• Interventions: Other: Social Skills training with Avatar therapist

• Registration Number: NCT02879591
• Lead Sponsor: University Hospital, Montpellier

Brief Summary

The objective of AlterEgo is the creation of an interactive cognitive architecture, implementable in various artificial agents, allowing a continuous interaction with patients suffering from social disorders, by virtue of changes in behavioural (robot-based) as well as morphological (avatar-based) properties of that agent. The project includes research in fundamental and clinical neurosciences, interaction modeling, development of new computer-vision techniques and human-robot interfaces, as well as evaluation of the scenarios with patients before, during, and after training sessions. At the end of the project, the investigators will produce a new avatar-based clinical method able to enhance social interaction of patients.

The first challenge of this project is to create an avatar alter ego of a patient. Based on recent work in social robotics and neurosciences, the investigators hypothesize that if patients face artificial agents morphologically and behaviourally similar to them, they will increase their social interaction. The second challenge is to transform the morphology and the behaviour of the similar artificial agent into that of a healthy and different agent. The investigators assume that the smooth and continuous behavioural shift from similar/unhealthy to complementary/healthy social behaviour will lead to a better social rehabilitation. AlterEgo opens the door to a new generation of social artificial agents in service robotics. AlterEgo is an interdisciplinary project at the interaction of Social Motor Neurosciences (UM1), Robotics (EPFL), Complex Systems Dynamics (UOB), Computer Vision (DFKI), and Psychiatry (CHU).

This project includes a set of experiments that started in april 2014 and will terminate in september 2016 before undergoing a randomised clinical research.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2014-04
• Study First Submitted: 2016-07-29
• Status Verified: 2016-08
• Study First Submitted QC: 2016-08-24
• Last Update Submitted: 2016-08-24
• Study First Posted: 2016-08-25
• Last Update Posted: 2016-08-25
• Primary Completion: 2016-09
• Study Completion: 2016-09

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: UNKNOWN
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 246

Inclusion Criteria

• Patients suffering from schizophrenia according to the criteria proposed in the DSM-IV-TR
• Aged between 18 and 60 years old.

Exclusion Criteria

• History of head trauma
• History of neurological disorders (epilepsy disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's disease, stroke)
• An actual ECT treatment
• Substance Abuse and / or current Substance dependence (excluding tobacco and cannabis).
• Pregnant women, new mothers and nursing mothers
• People private of their liberty

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Healthy volunteers	Social Skills training with Avatar therapist	Healthy volunteers
Patients with schizophrenia	Social Skills training with Avatar therapist	Patients with schizophrenia

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
number of patient enhancing social intercation	3 months	improvement of social interactions (interpersonal relations, items 1 to 7 on Specific Levels Of Functioning, SLOF)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
questionnaire for Faisability of avatar therapy	3 months
number of patient accepting avatar therapy	3 months

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Service Universitaire de psychiatrie adulte, University Hospital of Montpellier; 🇫🇷 Montpellier, France