Maker Faire Rome, Italian research reveals odor shape with AI helmet

2023-10-20 12:11:25

Discover what three-dimensional shape smells have, a unique fingerprint of your brain. It will be possible to do so for those who go to the Maker Faire, the innovation fair which opens today in Rome. ‘Neuroscent’ is a device for objective olfactory evaluation that uses ‘machine learning’ based classification of EEG (electroencephalogram) measurements. EEG signals acquired via a wearable EEG device – a headband with a wireless system – are transmitted for real-time analysis. Deep learning models extract features from EEG signals, training a classification model to differentiate olfactory responses. The research is signed by the Gemelli Irccs Polyclinic of Rome and involves Giulio Cesare Passali, member of the ENT Clinic; Mariaconsiglia Santantonio, specialist in Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery; Giuseppe Maulucci, of the Neuroscience department of the Institute of Physics of the Catholic University of Rome.

The Neuroscent research project provides real-time quantifiable assessments, aiding healthcare, food processing and environmental monitoring. “I have been dealing with smell for 25 years – Passali explains to time.news Salute – With Neuroscent we used a hi-tech helmet that already exists on the market, which is used to help concentration in yoga or to control a mouse with the mind, and we have adapted it to study brain waves under olfactory stimulation to see in detail which areas of the brain are stimulated when we smell a smell. Then, thanks to artificial intelligence we process the data we obtain with Eeg Ai, never standardized before, and which allow us to monitor whether a person perceives odors or not.”

“We are already evaluating healthy and sick patients – underlines the teacher – thanks to the cortical activation after the stimulation of smell. This allows us to study the correlations with the emotional component, with chronic pain and depression. Who will come to the Maker Faire you will be able to submit to these EEG tracings and have a two or three-dimensional imprint of your sense of smell. A sort of digital imprint of the smells perceived by the brain.”