Clinical desires to catch signals of human expression

- assisting communication of severely disabled patients with neurodegenerative disorders -

抄録

The authors present clinical desires to catch signals of human expression, and then ask opinions on communication support for severely disabled patients with neurodegenerative disorders from specialist members of the International Society of Affective Science and Engineering. Two aims were considered. One aim was to detect patients’ expressions as a trigger to a switch for an augmentative and alternative communication device and to accumulate facial signals conveying demented patients’ good or no-good expressions using a tool that is typically used for providing palliative care for non-cancer patients. The other aim was to determine the examined tool’s possibility for evaluation in normal subjects. The knowledge and skills required for communicating with severely disabled patients, especially with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), needs to be shared among colleagues in the form of vocational education. In the clinical fields, health-care professionals and undergraduates are too busy to make sufficient time to gain such knowledge and skills. With regard to the proposed tool, we raised the unusual question about whether our desires to catch signals of human expression are too idealistic and infeasible.