Enhancing Social Interaction With an AlterEgo Artificial Agent

Schizophrenia Clinical Trial

— ALTEREGO  

Official title:

Enhancing Social Interaction With an AlterEgo Artificial Agent

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT02879591
• Other study ID #: U 9038
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• First received: July 29, 2016
• Last updated: August 24, 2016
• Start date: April 2014
• Est. completion date: September 2016

Study information

• Verified date: August 2016
• Source: University Hospital, Montpellier
• Contact: Delphine Capdevielle, MD, PhD
• Phone: 0033467339727
• Email: d-capdevielle[@]chu-montpellier.Fr
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Health authority: France: Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament et des produits de santé
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The objective of AlterEgo is the creation of an interactive cognitive architecture, implementable in various artificial agents, allowing a continuous interaction with patients suffering from social disorders, by virtue of changes in behavioural (robot-based) as well as morphological (avatar-based) properties of that agent. The project includes research in fundamental and clinical neurosciences, interaction modeling, development of new computer-vision techniques and human-robot interfaces, as well as evaluation of the scenarios with patients before, during, and after training sessions. At the end of the project, the investigators will produce a new avatar-based clinical method able to enhance social interaction of patients.

The first challenge of this project is to create an avatar alter ego of a patient. Based on recent work in social robotics and neurosciences, the investigators hypothesize that if patients face artificial agents morphologically and behaviourally similar to them, they will increase their social interaction. The second challenge is to transform the morphology and the behaviour of the similar artificial agent into that of a healthy and different agent. The investigators assume that the smooth and continuous behavioural shift from similar/unhealthy to complementary/healthy social behaviour will lead to a better social rehabilitation. AlterEgo opens the door to a new generation of social artificial agents in service robotics. AlterEgo is an interdisciplinary project at the interaction of Social Motor Neurosciences (UM1), Robotics (EPFL), Complex Systems Dynamics (UOB), Computer Vision (DFKI), and Psychiatry (CHU).

This project includes a set of experiments that started in april 2014 and will terminate in september 2016 before undergoing a randomised clinical research.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Recruiting
• Enrollment: 246
• Est. completion date: September 2016
• Est. primary completion date: September 2016
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: Both
• Age group: 18 Years to 60 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Patients suffering from schizophrenia according to the criteria proposed in the DSM-IV-TR

• Aged between 18 and 60 years old.

Exclusion Criteria:

• History of head trauma

• History of neurological disorders (epilepsy disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's disease, stroke)

• An actual ECT treatment

• Substance Abuse and / or current Substance dependence (excluding tobacco and cannabis).

• Pregnant women, new mothers and nursing mothers

• People private of their liberty

Study Design

Allocation: Non-Randomized, Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment, Masking: Open Label

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Schizophrenia

Intervention

Other:
• Social Skills training with Avatar therapist

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
France	Service Universitaire de psychiatrie adulte, University Hospital of Montpellier	Montpellier

Sponsors (5)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University Hospital, Montpellier	DEUTSCHES FORSCHUNGSZENTRUM FUER KUENSTLICHE, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Université Montpellier, University of Bristol

Country where clinical trial is conducted

France, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	number of patient enhancing social intercation	improvement of social interactions (interpersonal relations, items 1 to 7 on Specific Levels Of Functioning, SLOF)	3 months	No
Secondary	number of patient accepting avatar therapy		3 months	No
Secondary	questionnaire for Faisability of avatar therapy		3 months	No