Unipi Team Leader: prof. Enzo Pasquale Scilingo, Dip. di Ingegneria dell’Informazione

The way chemistry influences human communication is one of the most intriguing and debated topics. More specifically, the nature of chemosignals and their sphere of influence on social interaction is a very important key to understanding human behaviour. POTION proposes a novel technological paradigm to delve deeper into understanding meaningful social interaction, combining new knowledge about the chemical composition of human social chemosignals together with a novel olfactory-based technology designed to drive social behaviour.

A first challenging analysis on human chemosignals to delineate the chemical underpinnings of the emotions of happiness and fear will be carried out since they are the representative emotions that drive approach and avoidance behaviour, i.e., the fundamental building blocks of social interaction between individuals of the same species. Results of this analysis will be used to artificially synthetize the chemosignals of these two emotions, which will provide the basis of an innovative computer-controlled odour delivery system able to drive the approach-avoidance social strategy.

This breakthrough device will be controlled in a closed loop by the social-emotional state of the subjects evaluated through a novel computational neural model. The POTION system will be applied and tested in both social and clinical scenarios. In the social scenarios, we venture to reveal how olfaction clues work in managing the feelings of trust, presence and inclusion, in both virtual, real, and social media contexts. In the clinical scenario, POTION will propose a new human chemosignal-based diagnosis and treatment for social anxiety, phobias and depression, which are known to all share impaired social functioning. POTION will provide further insight to the fundamental underpinnings of human behaviour with the goal to help establish healthy social relationships through trust, leading to an overall improvement in wellbeing.

Coordinator

UNIVERSITA DI PISA Italy

Participants

• ISPA CRL Portugal
• KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET Sweden
• SRA INSTRUMENTS SAS France
• UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA Spain
• UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX United Kingdom
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA Italy
• INVENTYA VENTURES (EU) LIMITED Ireland
• KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN Belgium
• FEEL-ING S.R.L. Italy

Start date 01/01/2019

End date 31/12/2023

Duration 60 months

Project cost 6.560.150 €

Project funding 6.560.150 €

Unipi quota 1.410.450 €

Call title H2020-FETPROACT-2018-01

Unipi role Coordinator

Website: https://potionh2020.com/ 

Link consigliati:

Intervista al Prof. Scilingo inerente il progetto Potion