The emotional response a person has to a living space is predominantly affected by light, color and texture as space-making elements. In order to verify whether this phenomenon could be replicated in a simulated environment, we conducted a user study in a six-sided projected immersive display that utilized equivalent design attributes of brightness, color and texture in order to assess to which extent the emotional response in a simulated environment is affected by the same parameters affecting real environments. Since emotional response depends upon the context, we evaluated the emotional responses of two groups of users: inactive (passive) and active (performing a typical daily activity). The results from the perceptual study generated data from which design principles for a virtual living space are articulated. Such a space, as an alternative to expensive built dwellings, could potentially support new, minimalist lifestyles of occupants, defined as the neo-nomads, aligned with their work experience in the digital domain through the generation of emotional experiences of spaces. Data from the experiments confirmed the hypothesis that perceivable emotional aspects of real-world spaces could be successfully generated through simulation of design attributes in the virtual space. The subjective response to the virtual space was consistent with corresponding responses from real-world color and brightness emotional perception. Our data could serve the virtual reality (VR) community in its attempt to conceive of further applications of virtual spaces for well-defined activities.

Previous models of creativity are based on linking a subsystem that generates ideas from combining existing concepts with a critic that decides whether these ideas are sufficiently useful and novel. A variety of conditions can lead the critic to be either more severe or more lenient than otherwise. The conditions that make the critic more severe include evaluation apprehension, which frequently occurs in group brainstorming situations, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The conditions that make the critic more lenient include induction of emotions that engender a feeling of certainty or confidence. A network theory for such emotional influences on idea generation is proposed based on extending earlier models to add influences of both the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex on behavioral gating in the basal ganglia.

The University of the Digital Society is based on interactions that facilitate learning in a new pragmatic context. Catalysts involved in the learning process replace the traditional professor. Students dynamically constitute classes of shared interest, which cease to exist once learning goals are achieved or prove unattainable. Learning, procedural in nature, takes place in the interaction, eventually embodied in a project. The digital infrastructure of the widely distributed, new virtual learning environment must be specified in terms of educational goals. Extremely rich data and many different computations will have to be seamlessly integrated. Modeling and access to data, corresponding to intuitive forms of interaction, will exceed all other forms of computation - a major challenge to everyone involved in conceiving methods appropriate to the new education. Learning driven by anticipation -proactive acquisition and dissemination of knowledge instead of training in reaction to the problems we face - is the basis of the new education.

No abstract available.