Identification of Breathing Patterns through EEG Signal Analysis Using Machine Learning

Position Statement and Recommendations for Custom-Made Sport Mouthguards

Sports-related traumatic dental injuries (TDIs) are a significant global concern, particularly in contact sports, where the risk of orofacial injuries is high. Custom-made sports mouthguards (CSMs) are recognized as the most effective means of preventing these injuries, providing both protection and comfort without impairing athletic performance. Despite their proven benefits, there is no globally standardized approach to mouthguard design, fabrication, or usage, primarily due to varying regulations, awareness levels, and cultural attitudes toward sports safety across different countries. This document from the European Association for Sports Dentistry (EA4SD) outlines the latest guidelines for selecting, constructing, clinical use, and maintaining CSMs. It emphasizes the need for mouthguards fabricated from FDA-approved materials, designed to absorb and distribute impact forces effectively, and customized to ensure optimal fit and comfort. The EA4SD also highlights the importance of education for dental professionals and athletes on the benefits of CSMs, advocating for their mandatory use in high-risk sports to reduce the prevalence of TDIs and related complications.

Deconstructing heterogeneity in schizophrenia through language: a semi-automated linguistic analysis and data-driven clustering approach

Previous works highlighted the relevance of automated language analysis for predicting diagnosis in schizophrenia, but a deeper language-based data-driven investigation of the clinical heterogeneity through the illness course has been generally neglected. Here we used a semiautomated multidimensional linguistic analysis innovatively combined with a machine-driven clustering technique to characterize the speech of 67 individuals with schizophrenia. Clusters were then compared for psychopathological, cognitive, and functional characteristics. We identified two subgroups with distinctive linguistic profiles: one with higher fluency, lower lexical variety but greater use of psychological lexicon; the other with reduced fluency, greater lexical variety but reduced psychological lexicon. The former cluster was associated with lower symptoms and better quality of life, pointing to the existence of specific language profiles, which also show clinically meaningful differences. These findings highlight the importance of considering language disturbances in schizophrenia as multifaceted and approaching them in automated and data-driven ways.

EEG-Based Empathic Safe Cobot

An empathic collaborative robot (cobot) was realized through the transmission of fear from a human agent to a robot agent. Such empathy was induced through an electroencephalographic (EEG) sensor worn by the human agent, thus realizing an empathic safe brain-computer interface (BCI). The empathic safe cobot reacts to the fear and in turn transmits it to the human agent, forming a social circle of empathy and safety. A first randomized, controlled experiment involved two groups of 50 healthy subjects (100 total subjects) to measure the EEG signal in the presence or absence of a frightening event. The second randomized, controlled experiment on two groups of 50 different healthy subjects (100 total subjects) exposed the subjects to comfortable and uncomfortable movements of a collaborative robot (cobot) while the subjects’ EEG signal was acquired. The result was that a spike in the subject’s EEG signal was observed in the presence of uncomfortable movement. The questionnaires were distributed to the subjects, and confirmed the results of the EEG signal measurement. In a controlled laboratory setting, all experiments were found to be statistically significant. In the first experiment, the peak EEG signal measured just after the activating event was greater than the resting EEG signal (p < 10−3). In the second experiment, the peak EEG signal measured just after the uncomfortable movement of the cobot was greater than the EEG signal measured under conditions of comfortable movement of the cobot (p < 10−3). In conclusion, within the isolated and constrained experimental environment, the results were satisfactory.