Seasickness is a prevalent issue that adversely impacts both passenger experiences and the operational efficiency of maritime crews. While techniques that redirect attention have proven effective in alleviating motion sickness symptoms in terrestrial environments, applying similar strategies to manage seasickness poses unique challenges due to the prolonged and intense motion environment associated with maritime travel. In this study, we propose a mindfulness brain-computer interface (BCI), specifically designed to redirect attention with the aim of mitigating seasickness symptoms in real-world settings. Our system utilizes a single-channel headband to capture prefrontal EEG signals, which are then wirelessly transmitted to computing devices for the assessment of mindfulness states. The results are transferred into real-time feedback as mindfulness scores and audiovisual stimuli, facilitating a shift in attentional focus from physiological discomfort to mindfulness practices. A total of 43 individuals participated in a real-world maritime experiment consisted of three sessions: a real-feedback mindfulness session, a resting session, and a pseudofeedback mindfulness session. Notably, 81.39% of participants reported that the mindfulness BCI intervention was effective, and there was a significant reduction in the severity of seasickness, as measured by the Misery Scale (MISC). Furthermore, EEG analysis revealed a decrease in the theta/beta ratio, corresponding with the alleviation of seasickness symptoms. A decrease in overall EEG band power during the real-feedback mindfulness session suggests that the mindfulness BCI fosters a more tranquil and downregulated state of brain activity. Together, this study presents a novel nonpharmacological, portable, and effective approach for seasickness intervention, with the potential to enhance the cruising experience for both passengers and crews.

Mindfulness-based therapies have been shown to be effective in improving mental health, and technology-based methods have the potential to expand the accessibility of these therapies. To enable real-time personalized content generation for mindfulness practice in these methods, high-quality computer-synthesized text-to-speech (TTS) voices are needed to provide verbal guidance and respond to user performance and preferences. However, the user-perceived quality of state-of-the-art TTS voices has not yet been evaluated for administering mindfulness meditation, which requires emotional expressiveness. In addition, work has not yet been done to study the effect of physical embodiment and personalization on the user-perceived quality of TTS voices for mindfulness. To that end, we designed a two-phase human subject study. In Phase 1, an online Mechanical Turk between-subject study (N=471) evaluated 3 (feminine, masculine, child-like) state-of-the-art TTS voices with 2 (feminine, masculine) human therapists' voices in 3 different physical embodiment settings (no agent, conversational agent, socially assistive robot) with remote participants. Building on findings from Phase 1, in Phase 2, an in-person within-subject study (N=94), we used a novel framework we developed for personalizing TTS voices based on user preferences, and evaluated user-perceived quality compared to best-rated non-personalized voices from Phase 1. We found that the best-rated human voice was perceived better than all TTS voices; the emotional expressiveness and naturalness of TTS voices were poorly rated, while users were satisfied with the clarity of TTS voices. Surprisingly, by allowing users to fine-tune TTS voice features, the user-personalized TTS voices could perform almost as well as human voices, suggesting user personalization could be a simple and very effective tool to improve user-perceived quality of TTS voice.

Would you like to be more rational? Who doesn't want to behave and think more reasonably? Good news: New research, from Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, suggests mindfulness, or at least an aspect of it, can help. By "mindfulness"--a feature of Buddhism for thousands of years, and a subject of scientific investigation for a few decades--most people mean a mental state you can be in. If you find yourself bringing past or possible future events into your imagination, let those drift off, and attend again to your present sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Being mindful for a few seconds is easy.

The 19th-century physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared his progress in solving a problem to that of a mountain climber "compelled to retrace his steps because his progress stopped." A mountain climber, von Helmholtz said, "hits upon traces of a fresh path, which again leads him a little further." The physicist's introspection provokes the question: How do creative minds overcome valleys to get to the next higher peak? Because thinking minds are different from evolving organisms and self-assembling molecules, we cannot expect them to use the same means--mechanisms like genetic drift and thermal vibrations--to overcome deep valleys in the landscapes they explore. But they must have some way to achieve the same purpose.

Adam*, is an engineer on Google's self-driving car project (now its own division, called Waymo). He says the daily pace of work borders on fanatical. When he's in the lab, the outside world disappears--we know this because he tells us so, and also because our text messages and emails to him almost always go unanswered. Adam works full tilt, wholly immersing himself in the brains and guts of a car that, if Google gets it right, will be a total game-changer. Adam, however, would never say that. He knows that he and his team must first figure out, among many other things, how to teach an inanimate object moving at 70 miles per hour to differentiate between a stray plastic bag and a stray deer.

It can seem like a Catch-22 is baked into the practice of meditation. It's meant, among other things, to foster patience--but meditation also seems to require considerable patience to work. Or at least "mindfulness meditation" does. When I began to toy with it several years ago--because of the demonstrable health benefits science was showing it could provide--I found that I couldn't stand the "mindfulness" version. In "The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation," a 2015 paper in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Yi-Yuan Tang and colleagues write that mindfulness meditation is often described as "non-judgmental attention to present-moment experiences."

When American novelist David Foster Wallace delivered the commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, he urged the graduating class to "exercise some control over how and what you think." If you don't at least try to regulate your thoughts and behaviors, Wallace cautioned, you will go through life "dead, unconscious, a slave to your head." Wallace himself long suffered with unwanted negative thoughts and crippling self-doubt--and took his own life three years after that speech. But can our mind become a "terrible master," as Wallace described? Kessler, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has considered that question for the past two decades, studying how substances such as food, alcohol and tobacco can hijack our brain chemistry and compel us to act against our own best intentions--bingeing on brownies, booze or cigarettes.