%0 Journal Article %T Affective Interaction with a Virtual Character Through an fNIRS Brain-Computer Interface %+ Multimédia (MM) %+ Département Traitement du Signal et des Images (TSI) %A Aranyi, G. %A Pecune, Florian %A Charles, Fred %A Pelachaud, Catherine %A Cavazza, Marc %< avec comité de lecture %Z FP:Frontiers-16 %@ 1662-5188 %J Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience %I Frontiers %8 2016-07 %D 2016 %K brain-computer interfaces %K fNIRS %K neurofeedback %K affective computing %K virtual agents %Z Computer Science [cs]/Human-Computer Interaction [cs.HC]Journal articles %X Affective brain-computer interfaces (BCI) harness Neuroscience knowledge to develop affective interaction from first principles. In this article, we explore affective engagement with a virtual agent through Neurofeedback (NF). We report an experiment where subjects engage with a virtual agent by expressing positive attitudes towards her under a NF paradigm. We use for affective input the asymmetric activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL-PFC), which has been previously found to be related to the high-level affective-motivational dimension of approach/avoidance. The magnitude of left-asymmetric DL-PFC activity, measured using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and treated as a proxy for approach, is mapped onto a control mechanism for the virtual agent’s facial expressions, in which action units (AUs) are activated through a neuralnetwork.Wecarriedoutanexperimentwith18subjects,whichdemonstratedthat subjects are able to successfully engage with the virtual agent by controlling their mental disposition through NF, and that they perceived the agent’s responses as realistic and consistentwiththeirprojectedmentaldisposition.Thisinteractionparadigmisparticularly relevant in the case of affective BCI as it facilitates the volitional activation of specific areas normally not under conscious control. Overall, our contribution reconciles a model of affect derived from brain metabolic data with an ecologically valid, yet computationally controllable, virtual affective communication environment. %G English %L hal-02287538 %U https://telecom-paris.hal.science/hal-02287538 %~ INSTITUT-TELECOM %~ CNRS %~ ENST %~ TELECOM-PARISTECH %~ PARISTECH %~ UNIV-PARIS-SACLAY %~ TELECOM-PARISTECH-SACLAY %~ LTCI %~ IDS %~ MM %~ INSTITUTS-TELECOM