Investigating how video games can help people strokes recover

I have combined my efforts in writing video games in effort to help people from strokes recover with my study of natural language processing. I am currently reading books about how strokes can be compensated for using other parts of the brain, some of which may be dormant but they still exist. Language is a foundation as to how we communicate with others and often is a way that thoughts are conveyed within us. Studies have been conducted that find that people who have somniloquy or are sleep talkers. WebMD finds that 10% of children make utterances in their sleep or when they are in the process of waking up. When a person is asleep in the past they often thought that the brain activity waves would shut down, however recent studies in sleep found that a person utilizes the brain as much during the night as they do during the day. The book, Our Brain: The Story of You tells of how a patient had  hemispherectomy or part of their brain removed in order to prevent epileptic episodes. As a side effect, they were unable to create new memories but the memories that they had remained. Sometimes memories are activated during the night, however the part of the brain that determines whether or not the implications of the dream is not functional. As a result of some dreams perceptions change and sometimes people wake up irritated with another person because of an altered perception that might not be realistic. However language is devised to come up with ideas. This is made evident because of the orphanage situation during the reign of the communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu. He wanted to increase the Romanian work force side to increase revenue into the country. Not only were abortions illegal but each family that did not produce at least five offspring were taxed heavy taxes. As the economy collapsed, many family were forced to abandon their children in orphanages. In these state operated orphanages, while at a minimum, there should be three care takers for every 15 kids, there was only one. After the fall of the communists in 1989 the children that were in the care of the state continued to grow from 47,405 orphans in the care of 25,870 orphanages in 1990 to 62,000 in the care of 19,000 orphanages. The care takers were told not to pick up or show any affection to the kids that were in their cribs because of the fear that should the caretaker show affection to one, they all would want attention and draw the energy out of their limited number of caretakers. In 2009 BBC journalist Chris Rodgers was appalled by conditions and found that the orphans spoke a course language they made up themselves to communicate amongst themselves to survive.

What does this have to do with patients who had a stroke? The answer is that human language is a foremost tool in comprehension and our survival. In the book Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain Dana Suskind argues that language is the foremost building block upon which our education system is built. Noam Chomsky argues that language is itself innate because people from other cultures communicate in much the same way universally. The book, American English compendium : a portable guide to the idiosyncrasies, subtleties, technical lingo, and nooks and crannies of American English by Marv Rubinstein makes the point that there once was a gap between people of different countries, even American English and British English were distinct while Canadian English were a blend between the two. Because of media this gap has somewhat closed, however many phrases are still based on historic culture. Dana Suskind cites Hart and Risley's study showing people who are more successful later in life have more interaction with their parents that are memorable because they are positive. The people who did not do so well in life according to their study suppressed negative memories of interaction with their parents which were fewer. Questions arise such as who has memories that are dormant that could benefit most from my study into games.

Games are beneficial because they are multisensory and can help people become aquanted with Hebbian learning that is that neurons which fire together wire together. This can become out of sequence when a stroke occurs and kicks the stroke person out of autopilot mode for some of their tasks requiring renewed thought and concentration to each event as though they are relearning how to become acquainted with human life at infancy. Since the person does not have the benefits of an enhanced childhood set of neurons commonly referred to as the golden era of learning, this process is even more difficult. The goals are to take what motivates each gender and age group and helps them become motivated towards their goals.

To answer these questions I am continuing to read books such as:
Thirty Million words: Building a Child's Brain by Dana Suskins
The Brain, the story of you by David Eagleman
American English compendium : a portable guide to the idiosyncrasies, subtleties, technical lingo, and nooks and crannies of American English by Marv Rubinstein
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J Levitin
The Well-Tuned Brain by Peter C Whybrow
Hijacked By Your Brain by Dr. Julian Ford
The Brain's Way of Healing by Norman Doidge
Brainstorm by Daniel J Siegel, MD
Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow
Bugs, Bowels, and Behavior,
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kein
Whose in Charge? by Michael S. Gazzaniga
Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow
Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Tell by Matthew Hertensten
Home Sweet Anywhere by Lynne Martin
The Power of Habbit by Charles Duhigg

Apps I am continuing to experiment with:
Audacity
Adobe Audition
Nero WaveEditor
Frinika
LMMS
OpenMPT
MuseScore
Wordnet 2.1
Advene

Microsoft Research applications:
MSR Identity Toolkit
Lexical Semantics Toolkit
Language Identifier
Video loops (I am hoping to capture the liveliness and match it with the pitch) I am also using Zootracer for this.
3DVideo distribution
Microsoft Research Mood Board Setup to capture the sentiment of the speaker and to provide a trajectory for their persona so I can find out the probability of them saying certain things.
Microsoft Social media data based on search results
Microsoft Tree based structured learning algorithms applied to tweet entry linking
WikiQA corprus
Microsoft Research Spectrogram Inversion Toolbox. This ties audio and looks at Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineer Workshop. This is built in octave.
Pitch change octave models
Microsoft RIN studio or Microsoft rich interactive narratives
If-This-Than-That programs and descriptions corpus
Project Colletta
Graphic probability models
ProbablisticZ (a solver for bounded reach ability problems)
CVPR  a toolkit that helps people think about the world and makes Bayesian decisions
Weighted PINQ
Annotation tools
GeoS for medical imaging
Tools based off images
Plato
MSR demosaicing
Hyperlapse for finding continuity in a data source such as a helmet and convert it into a stable camera

SIL translator tool
These projects consists of
Speech Analyzer
Cog
Fieldworks
LingTree
Lexique Pro
Translation Editor
Language Explorer 8
Pathway

The US military put together a list of tools for hearing:

http://hearing.health.mil/EducationAdvocacy/WebMobileSimulationsandApps.aspxI also continue to use programs such as NIOSH Hearing Loss Simulator
CochSim a cochlear implant simulation
Starkey Hearing Loss Simulator
Earbud.org Hearing Simulators
uHear
Play it Down
SoundCheck
dB Volume by DSP Mobile
Decibel 10th
Hearing Aid Free TiAu Engineering UG

Modeling workflow

I've been working with a research organization coming up with a game that improves the lives of people with strokes. I am working as a volunteer programmer. Of particular interest to them was the workflow that I now share with you:

Risk management

 I've been working with a research project involving neurogaming. It improving the minds of  people who start to show memory loss or have mental illnesses such as autism through mirror neurons and simulation. This project differs from competitors because does more immersive experiences such as Playstation or Gamecube. In order for a person to truly exercise they need to be caught up in the passion of the event and forget that they are exercising. It's like the book "See Spot Run" vs "Jurassic Park". You can base a movie on Jurassic Park but I think I'd save my money on the spot video. Athletes can get caught up in a sport such as tennis and forget they are working out. And it will be freely available online with support from advertising dollars. I think that the people who could benefit from this the most, the people with early signs of memory loss and mentally illness, are the ones who cost is a barrier to using other platforms. We also sell the anonymous research to aid in the development of other benefits and services. This is similar to Fred Rodger's congressional plea that children can be confused by "bombardment" and the need to do what is not natural such as bopping each other over the head. What is more natural is discussing what happens when they get a hair cut.

One such element that this project works on is risk. Every job encounters risks, from economics, medicine, and information technology. Closer to home, in order to be independent, one has to keep up with personal finances. I recently read Risk Savvy, by Gerd Gigerenzer who talks about how people are needlessly afraid of things that statistically are not probable. An example of a possible risk is radiation. People associate radiation with cancer, yet overseas people use irradiation, a process of stripping electrons from food in order to preserve it.

Problematic reason
1) Often people have a gut feeling and then come up with reasons why the feeling is correct.
2) Defensive thinking. Preparing for the worst case scenario leads efforts to protect our professional selves resulting in humans causing other problems by over treatment. Because of lawsuits doctors spend a huge amount of personal assets in liability malpractice insurance. While humans make mistakes, this adds to the costs of patients and can deter them from seeing a doctor because they cannot afford to do so. Some mistakes can be good. Larry Page is said to thank a business analyst who made an error because it was a good teaching tool.

On the other side Americans spend $30 billion at casinos, Greece's economy needed to be propped up because they cannot see clearly what is happening.

Some Good thinking
1. Be satisfied with things that are simple. In search of one's greed and ego, one can make their situation worse.
2) Imitate a peer, do what works for them
3) Seek advice from researchers
4) While in certain circumstances it is advisable to stick with what works, one also learns through errors and doing things differently.

I also read Dataclysm by Christian Rudder. It introduced the need to "fit in" is a powerful motivator. It talks about how in order to remain memorable it is necessary to capitalize on distinctive. Should a person try to fit in they will not be memorable. Men and women have a different way of viewing each other. Typically women need smaller things to feel that they are fortunate while men need bigger ticket items such as cars, TVs, and computers. It is more common for men to marry a slightly older woman because they value advice and feel as though they are more empathetic.

Things the games can teach
1) Statistics
2) Psychology of risks