DANIEL LANDAU

Non-verbal communication is an extremely important aspect of our life, sometimes estimated to comprise of 65% to 93% of all communication, and the majority of our feelings and intentions are expressed with the help of non-verbal communication [1]. Nevertheless, this aspect of communication is often overlooked by the brain-computer interface community. Non-verbal communication involves sending and receiving signals with the help of body language, gestures, postures, proximity, haptic and facial expressions. Our over-arching goal is creating a new quality of non-verbal communication between disable and able subjects. Specifically, dance can be considered a form of non-verbal communication, as it plays an important role in sharing strong feelings of togetherness between humans. Previous research showed that observation of dance results in strong activation of motor brain areas, and, importantly, observation of live dance produces significantly stronger motor activity than observation of dance on video [2]. We report about our work in progress research, aimed at exploring the potential of multimodal feedback based on both haptics and live dancers in facilitating BCI performance.