Ilya Vidrin | Northeastern University (original) (raw)

Papers by Ilya Vidrin

Clinical Neurophysiology, 2013

Introduction Increased incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in individuals with Diabetes Type II... more Introduction Increased incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in individuals with Diabetes Type II (DM2) suggests a possible pathophysiologic link. Support for such a link comes from several experimental animal models. Insulin deficiency and resistance are major factors in the pathogenesis of DM2 and appear to be involved in the neurodegenerative processes of AD by altering synaptic brain plasticity. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be used to examine mechanisms of plasticity, and may thus reveal abnormalities in patients with DM2 that might resemble those in patients with AD. Objectives Evaluate cortical plasticity mechanisms in subjects with DM2 and compare them with those in patients with AD as assessed by TMS measures. Explore possible similarities in abnormal brain plasticity in order to investigate the link between DM2 and AD. Materials and methods To evaluate cortical brain plasticity we applied intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) at 80% of active motor threshold (aMT) over the left primary motor cortex (M1) in patients with mild to moderate AD, DM2 and in healthy individuals. iTBS consisted of a total of 600 pulses divided into 20 trains, each including bursts of 3 pulses at 50 Hz repeated at 5 Hz for 2 s and with an 8 s interval between trains. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) of the right first dorsal interosseus muscle (FDI) were triggered by neuronavigated single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (spTMS) over left M1 at 120% of resting motor threshold (rMT) before and after iTBS. Changes in MEP amplitudes after iTBS were examined as measures of long term potentiation (LTP) like plasticity. Results Within the first 20 min following iTBS baseline corrected MEPs were significantly larger for healthy subjects (1.32 ± 0.21 mV) compared to patients with AD (0.92 ± 0.08 mV; p = 0.023) and DM2 (0.69 ± 0.15 mV; p = 0.007) (Fig. 1). There was no significant difference between AD and DM2 (p = 0.63). Interestingly, while iTBS had almost no effect on AD patients it tended to have a paradoxically inhibitory effect in patients with DM2. Conclusion The iTBS-induced modulation of corticospinal excitability is impaired in both AD and DM2. This finding supports the notion of aberrant LTP-like mechanisms of plasticity in DM2 and AD, and suggests a pathophysiologic link between the two diseases. This link may account for the epidemiologically increased risk for patients with DM2 to develop AD. Further studies and longitudinal assessments are needed to explore such a link further, but in this context, TMS-methods appear promising and may become a valuable early biomarker for AD and individuals at risk. Acknowledgements The study was sponsored and supported by the Harvard Catalyst, Nexstim, Neuronix Ltd., the National Institutes of Health, and the Berenson-Allen Foundation. Download : Download high-res image (60KB) Download : Download full-size image

Performance Research

Dance, as a mode of physical interaction, offers opportunities to care and be cared for, but this... more Dance, as a mode of physical interaction, offers opportunities to care and be cared for, but this does not mean that dancers will, in fact, care. There may be no moral motivation underlying a lift, dip or intricate sequence of coordinated action. Choreographic scores may (knowingly or not) encourage merely perfunctory movements that are a poor simulacrum to care. Moreover, the caring that is expressed through dance need not transfer to other walks of life. I am not alone in knowing spectacularly talented dancers whose behaviour off the dance floor is far from ethical – from the arrogant and petty to the flagrant abuse that plagues institutions of art and culture. This article considers how dance can illuminate both the acts and sentiments of care, conveying particular ethical orientations that trouble straightforward, absolute moral reasoning. The article frames an enquiry into the relation between ethics and aesthetics of care, drawn from feminist epistemologists Joan Tronto, Maurice Hamington, and Nel Noddings, as well as my own performance research on partnering. I frame a zone between technique and competence, foregrounding care in dance as both a technical and ethical issue. I will consider the necessary conditions by which dancing together can manifest care, rather than suggest blanketly that it always does or even that it should. To make this argument, I will describe and analyse Considered Care, a duet I created in the autumn of 2021 in collaboration with Boston Ballet. This performance research project provided the material from which to consider the concept of need, a condition of care in a dancing situation. I will conclude by considering the relationship between needs and trust in conceptualizing care within partnering.

Performance Research, 2023

Coventry University, 2020

Cognitive decline is one of the core symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) (Cummings et al... more Cognitive decline is one of the core symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) (Cummings et al., 1998). AD is associated with brain atrophy and connectivity impairments and has a tremendous impact on quality of life (Alzheimer's Association Facts and Figures' Report, 2010). Up to date there is little evidence on beneficial effects from cognitive interventions (Clare et al., 2003), possibly because of abnormal mechanisms of brain plasticity in AD patients. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) may be used to modulate brain plasticity and thus might prompt the effects of cognitive training (Bashir et al., 2010; Freitas et al., 2010). In this proof-of-principle study we applied NeuroAD using NICE technology (Neuronix Ltd. Israel) and measured its impact on cognitive functions as well as on brain plasticity in patients with mild AD. A recent, open-label study of NeuroAD showed encouraging clinical results (Bentwich et al., 2011).

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Movement and Computing, 2018

Working towards the goal of understanding complex, interactive movement in human dyads, this pape... more Working towards the goal of understanding complex, interactive movement in human dyads, this paper presents a model for analyzing motion capture data of human pairs and proposes measures that correlate with features of the coordination in the movement. Based on deep inquiry of what it means to partner in a motion task, a measure that characterizes the changing verticality of each agent is developed. In parallel a naïve human motion expert provides a qualitative description of the features and quality of coordination within a dyad. Analysis on the verticality measure, the cross-correlation of verticality signals, and deviation of those verticality signals from the trend over time, provides quantitative insight that corroborates the naïve expert's analysis. Specifically, the paper shows that, for four samples of dyadic behavior, these measures provide information about 1) whether two agents were involved in the same dyadic interaction and 2) the level of "resistance" fou...

Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), Jan 2, 2015

Our team of dance artists, physicists, and machine learning researchers has collectively develope... more Our team of dance artists, physicists, and machine learning researchers has collectively developed several original, configurable machine-learning tools to generate novel sequences of choreography as well as tunable variations on input choreographic sequences. We use recurrent neural network and autoencoder architectures from a training dataset of movements captured as 53 three-dimensional points at each timestep. Sample animations of generated sequences and an interactive version of our model can be found at http: //www.this http URL.

Trust is often considered valuable in a broad range of relationships, from professional collabora... more Trust is often considered valuable in a broad range of relationships, from professional collaborations to personal partnerships. This article examines the possibility of trust in a robotic system. By posing the question “can a robot do a trust fall?”, an investigation on the issues embedded in designing trusting systems is presented, using methods and perspectives from philosophy and engineering. Posing such a question helps us understand the physicality and embodiment of trust, as well as the limits and resources of robotics.

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. During the pathological co... more Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. During the pathological course the brain undergoes drastic changes including brain atrophy and synaptic plasticity impairments. The primary symptoms are memory loss and a general cognitive decline. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) can be used to modulate brain plasticity and may enhance the effects of cognitive intervention methods when administered in combination. In this study we interleaved rTMS and cognitive training by applying NeuroAD using NICE technology (Neuronix Ltd., Israel) to patients with mild AD.

Thinking Touch in Partnering and Contact Improvisation, 2020

In this chapter, I argue that communication in partnering is a physical exchange of information o... more In this chapter, I argue that communication in partnering is a physical exchange of information on the basis of ethically-bound conditions. Simply put, partners can cause each other harm. Thus, the criteria of communication in partnering is always within an ethical domain, where action runs along a continuum ranging from the ethical to the unethical. To make this argument, I will first lay out the conditions to which the relevant norms of evaluation can adhere. These conditions include proximity, orientation, and point(s) of contact. Rather than provide a how-to guide for communication, I will examine a critical vocabulary for practically approaching communication in partnering. Section I begins with the conditions of communication, followed by Section II which examines the norms of communicating well.

Creative Computing, 2020

Trust is often considered valuable in a broad range of relationships , from professional collabor... more Trust is often considered valuable in a broad range of relationships , from professional collaborations to personal partnerships. This article examines the possibility of trust in a robotic system. By posing the question "can a robot do a trust fall?", an investigation on the issues embedded in designing trusting systems is presented, using methods and perspectives from philosophy and engineering. Posing such a question helps us understand the physicality and embodiment of trust, as well as the limits and resources of robotics.

Bodily rhetoric is a burgeoning field, with scholars investing attention to the ways in which non... more Bodily rhetoric is a burgeoning field, with scholars investing attention to the ways in which non-verbal communication mediates change between individuals and groups in complex scenarios, including political settings. Scenarios in which individuals move together – whether in completely extemporaneous situations or in existing forms such as Contact Improvisation, Argentinian Tango, or Classical Pas de Deux – pose a similarly complex communicative problem. Drawing on the work of Lloyd Bitzer, I demonstrate how rhetorical theory provides methodological insight by which we can better understand the dynamic practice that is always already happening in situations where individuals move together.

Alzheimer's & Dementia, 2012

As robotic systems are moved out of factory work cells into human-facing environments questions o... more As robotic systems are moved out of factory work cells into human-facing environments questions of choreography become central to their design, placement, and application. With a human viewer or counterpart present, a system will automatically be interpreted within context, style of movement, and form factor by human beings as animate elements of their environment. The interpretation by this human counterpart is critical to the success of the system's integration: " knobs " on the system need to make sense to a human counterpart; an artificial agent should have a way of notifying a human counterpart of a change in system state, possibly through motion profiles; and the motion of a human counterpart may have important contextual clues for task completion. Thus, professional choreographers, dance practitioners, and movement analysts are critical to research in robotics. They have design methods for movement that align with human audience perception; they can help identify simplified features of movement that will effectively accomplish human-robot interaction goals; and they have detailed knowledge of the capacity of human movement. This article provides approaches employed by one research lab, specific impacts on technical and artistic projects within, and principles that may guide future such work. The background section reports on choreography, somatic perspectives, improvisation, the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System, and robotics. From this context methods including embodied exercises, writing prompts, and community building activities have been developed to facilitate interdisciplinary research. The results of this work are presented as an overview of a smattering of projects in areas like high-level motion planning, software development for rapid prototyping of movement, artistic output, and user studies that help understand how people interpret movement. Finally, guiding principles for other groups to adopt are posited.

Common coding theory suggests that any action (pressing a piano key) is intimately linked with it... more Common coding theory suggests that any action (pressing a piano key) is intimately linked with its resul- tant sensory effect (an auditory musical tone). We conducted two experiments to explore the effect of varying auditory action–effect patterns during complex action learning. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to 1 of 4 groups, watched a silent video of a hand playing a sequence on a piano keyboard with no auditory action effect (observation) and were asked to practise and perform the sequence on an identical keyboard with varying action effects (reproduction). During reproduction, Group 1 heard no audi- tory tones (identical to observed video), Group 2 heard typical scale-ascending piano tones with each key press, Group 3 heard fixed but out-of-sequence piano tones with each key press, and Group 4 heard random piano tones with each key press. In Experiment two, new participants were assigned to 1 of 2 groups and watched an identical video; however, the video in this experiment contained typical, scale- ascending piano sounds. During reproduction, Group 1 heard no auditory tones while Group 2 heard typical, scale-ascending piano tones with each key press (identical to observed video). Our results showed that participants whose action–effect patterns during reproduction matched those in the observed video learned the action sequence faster than participants whose action–effect patterns during reproduction differed from those in the observed video. Additionally, our results suggest that adding an effect during reproduction (when one is absent during observation) is somewhat more detrimental to action sequence learning than removing an effect during reproduction (when one is present during observation).

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. During the pathological course the... more Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. During the pathological course the brain undergoes drastic changes including brain atrophy and synaptic plasticity impairments. The primary symptoms are memory loss and a general cognitive decline. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) can be used to modulate brain plasticity and may enhance the effects of cognitive intervention methods when administered in combination. In this study we interleaved rTMS and cognitive training by applying NeuroAD using NICE technology (Neuronix Ltd., Israel) to patients with mild AD.

Increased incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in individuals with Diabetes Type II (DM2) sugges... more Increased incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in individuals with Diabetes Type II (DM2) suggests a possible pathophysiologic link. Support for such a link comes from several experimental animal models. Insulin deficiency and resistance are major factors in the pathogenesis of DM2 and appear to be involved in the neurodegenerative processes of AD by altering synaptic brain plasticity. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be used to examine mechanisms of plasticity, and may thus reveal abnormalities in patients with DM2 that might resemble those in patients with AD.Evaluate cortical plasticity mechanisms in subjects with DM2 and compare them with those in patients with AD as assessed by TMS measures. Explore possible similarities in abnormal brain plasticity in order to investigate the link between DM2 and AD.To evaluate cortical brain plasticity we applied intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) at 80% of active motor threshold (aMT) over the left primary motor cortex (M1) in patients with mild to moderate AD, DM2 and in healthy individuals. iTBS consisted of a total of 600 pulses divided into 20 trains, each including bursts of 3 pulses at 50Hz repeated at 5Hz for 2s and with an 8s interval between trains. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) of the right first dorsal interosseus muscle (FDI) were triggered by neuronavigated single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (spTMS) over left M1 at 120% of resting motor threshold (rMT) before and after iTBS. Changes in MEP amplitudes after iTBS were examined as measures of long term potentiation (LTP) like plasticity.Within the first 20min following iTBS baseline corrected MEPs were significantly larger for healthy subjects (1.32 ±0.21mV) compared to patients with AD (0.92 ±0.08mV; p=0.023) and DM2 (0.69±0.15mV; p=0.007) (Fig. 1). There was no significant difference between AD and DM2 (p=0.63). Interestingly, while iTBS had almost no effect on AD patients it tended to have a paradoxically inhibitory effect in patients with DM2.The iTBS-induced modulation of corticospinal excitability is impaired in both AD and DM2. This finding supports the notion of aberrant LTP-like mechanisms of plasticity in DM2 and AD, and suggests a pathophysiologic link between the two diseases. This link may account for the epidemiologically increased risk for patients with DM2 to develop AD. Further studies and longitudinal assessments are needed to explore such a link further, but in this context, TMS-methods appear promising and may become a valuable early biomarker for AD and individuals at risk.The study was sponsored and supported by the Harvard Catalyst, Nexstim, Neuronix Ltd., the National Institutes of Health, and the Berenson-Allen Foundation.

Clinical Neurophysiology, 2013

Performance Research

Performance Research, 2023

Coventry University, 2020

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Movement and Computing, 2018

Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), Jan 2, 2015

Thinking Touch in Partnering and Contact Improvisation, 2020

Creative Computing, 2020

Alzheimer's & Dementia, 2012

In designing basic pressure sensors, we explore the bidirectional relationship between movement a... more In designing basic pressure sensors, we explore the bidirectional relationship between movement and sound through practice-based methods in studio and performance settings. Our research is focused particularly on using wearable (haptic and proxemic) technology as auditory biofeedback devices for elucidating the nuances of partnered movement including the coordinated shifting and sharing weight.

2016 Rhetoric Society of America Conference (Atlanta, Georgia) Building on conversations that em... more 2016 Rhetoric Society of America Conference (Atlanta, Georgia)

Building on conversations that emerged during the Rhetoric and Sensation Seminar at the 2015 RSA Summer Institute, we consider how to harness the power of rhetorical force. Differentiating between rhetorical force and rhetorical work, we argue that material, bodily, and sensory actions can create whirlpools of rhetorical force (storehouses of rhetorical energy, stilled momentum from rhetorical exertions) that can then be channeled into rhetorical work (more concrete instantiations of verbal or bodily rhetorical action). Operating from this point of view provides space to notice how seemingly inconsequential gestures and movements accumulate into recognizable rhetorical actions.

We access rhetorical force through choreography, which we view as a rhetoric of invention concerned with the history of places and bodies in recent memory, to explore how patterned bodily responses to exigencies can generate thrust. We position Susan Foster's definition of choreography as "a kinesthesis, a designated way of experiencing physicality and movement that, in turn, summons other bodies into a specific way of feeling towards it" (2) in tandem with Nathan Stormer's definition of space as a "dense, dynamic, heterogeneous network of material-semiotic elements that is the result of ordered, collective action" - in order to construct a framework of rhetorical choreography that explains how the interaction of individual trajectories delineates subjects in rhetorical spaces, produces torques of exigency, and constitutes resistance.

Drawing on our combined expertise in gesture, dance, and cognitive science, we aim to create a space for exploration, discovery, and embodied realization. We will provide framing questions and pointed tasks for participants to explore how gesture and movement are always operating with their own set of political and ideological assumptions, even (or perhaps especially) in academic spaces. Participants will be guided through movement explorations in order to physically experience the meaning and potential of rhetorical choreography. Through these explorations and discussions, we will address the following questions: what is the rhetorical nature of movement and gesture? Motion? How are rhetorical decisions choreographed? Is choreography delivery or something else?

2015 International Association for Dance Medicine and Science Conference (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania)

Dance Magazine, 2021

“Trust” and “care” are two concepts that frequently come up in conversations about partnering. Ye... more “Trust” and “care” are two concepts that frequently come up in conversations about partnering. Yet, when asked to articulate the difference, language often falls short. On the surface, there is a tendency to believe that what we say shouldn’t matter as much as how we express care and trust through action. But time and again, I’ve seen that how we conceive of these two concepts affects what actually plays out in practice.

From minor bickering and missteps to major conflicts and, even, injuries, labeling trust and care as merely abstract principles can have harmful consequences. After extensive research in cognitive neuroscience, social psychology and philosophy of interaction, I discovered a few key points that help distinguish trust and care in order to support a more effective and ethical partnering practice.

Psyche Magazine, 2021

Trust between humans relies on a frail and strange notion of shared experience, absurdity and vul... more Trust between humans relies on a frail and strange notion of shared experience, absurdity and vulnerability. Indeed, it’s surprisingly difficult to articulate exactly what trust is. One way of demonstrating that difficulty is to see if trust can be simulated – by robots. Attempting to turn trust into a strictly rational process demonstrates how hard it is to say just what’s going on when one person trusts another. So what happens when we ask ourselves and others to trust – or not trust – a machine, particularly one with some level of autonomy? What’s necessary for a robot to do a trust fall?