Mehdi Hafis was 23 when his life changed forever. A former restaurant worker, Mehdi had to stop working when he began to take powerful medicine. Medicine with side-effects.
Four years after the diagnosis, he struggles to have a normal life: "I used to think schizophrenia implied having a split personality. But each patient has different symptoms. Some hear inner voices, others have hallucinations. Others, like me, are very paranoid. I got very scared when diagnosed."
Medhi is one of 40 patients volunteering for a European research project, Alterego, aimed at providing innovative therapies to sufferers of social pathologies like schizophrenia.
The main rehabilitation tools are avatars of the patients themselves.
Robin Salesse, human movement scientist from Montpellier University, explains: "We create avatars that from a morphological point of view are very similar to the patients. But we also play with the similarity of the movements and behaviours. That is why we install sensors that will capture the patient's movements. This way we implement individual motion signatures from each patient into their own avatars".
The research is based on the theory of similarity. Coming from Neurosciences, it suggests that it is easier to socially interact with someone that looks like us.
Delphine Capdevielle, a psychiatrist from La Colombière hospital, confirms: "If an avatar looks like me, if it makes the same movements that I do and at the same time, I will much better retain what the avatar is telling me. Therapy will eventually become more efficient".
Body scanner technologies, motion tracking systems and complex mathematical models are all being used to develop realistic, relevant avatars.
The scientists also want to make their technology available via the camera of a smartphone, as project coordinator Benoit Bardy points out. Patients would then not necessarily need to come to the hospital, which would reduce the costs of treatment.
"Our patients don't have much money. So a big challenge for us is to develop a platform that can be used by everyone free of charge, or that can be reimbursed by social security systems," says Delphine Capdevielle and adds: "We need to ensure that we don't create further disparities among patients that already suffer many forms of inequalities".
€2.9 Mio of AlterEgo's total budget of €3.8 were contributed from EU funds.
A report on the project is featured on Futuris, the science programme of the pan-European television channel Euronews. It was shown more than a dozen times on TV until 6 November 2016 and can now be watched online:
Euronews report (4:09, also available in DE, FR, EL, ES, HU, IT, PT and further languages)
Euronews report, short version (0:49, "takeaway", no narration, English subtitles)