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Matusz Paul

Professeur-e HES Associé-e

Main skills

Sensory & brain rehabilitation

Professeur-e HES Associé-e

Desktop: LEU

HES-SO Valais-Wallis - Haute Ecole de Santé
Chemin de l'Agasse 5, 1950 Sion, CH

Faculty
Santé

Main Degree Programme
Physiothérapie

BSc HES-SO en Physiothérapie - HES-SO Valais-Wallis - Haute Ecole de Santé

Introduction to Science methodology & physiotherapy
Advanced Research Methods & Physiotherapy
Cyberhealth & Technologies in Physiotherapy

Ongoing

Immersive Prevention Centers for Mental Health (IP4MH)

Role: Co-applicant

Financement: EU Transforming Health & Care Systems (THCS)

Description du projet :

The proposed project aims to develop innovative Immersive Prevention Centers (IPCs) using virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) technologies within the Metaverse to address critical challenges in mental health care. Traditional mental health services often face limitations in accessibility, especially for underserved populations, due to geographical, socio-economic, and logistical barriers. By leveraging advanced VR/MR technologies, this project seeks to overcome these challenges, providing scalable and cost-effective mental health interventions that are accessible to a broader range of individuals.

The primary objective of the project is to design, develop, and evaluate IPCs that offer personalized, neuroscience-based therapeutic interventions. These centers will enable early detection and intervention for mental health conditions, which are crucial for preventing the progression of more severe health issues. By providing engaging and immersive therapeutic environments, the IPCs aim to improve treatment adherence and outcomes, enhancing patients' quality of life and overall mental well-being. The project will involve a co-design approach, actively engaging stakeholders, including patients, healthcare providers, and technology developers, to ensure the IPCs meet their needs and preferences. Two main usage modalities will be employed: one-shot sessions for secondary prevention and 6-month-long interventions for tertiary prevention, involving 20-30 participants per center across three locations (Senior Nantes, Junior Poland, Junior Switzerland). Data will be collected through interaction logs, user satisfaction ratings, focus groups, structured interviews, psychological assessments, and system usability scores.
The expected impact of the project extends beyond individual patient care. For the public sector, the IPCs can reduce healthcare costs by minimizing the need for physical infrastructure and staffing while improving public health outcomes through broader access to mental health services. For civil society, the project raises awareness about mental and brain health issues, promotes mental health education, and supports vulnerable groups by providing accessible and equitable mental health care. For the industry,
the project drives technological innovation, creating new markets and job opportun- ities in the tech and healthcare sectors, and enhances corporate social responsibility profiles. The comprehensive evaluation of the IPCs will involve analyzing behavioral, clinical, and performance data to assess adherence, acceptability, usability, efficacy, and technical feasibility. The project will employ a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, including thematic analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics, and machine learning models, to identify the most effective elements of the IPCs.

Research team within HES-SO: Matusz Paul , Widmer Antoine

Partenaires académiques: Tomalski Przemyslaw, Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), Warsaw, Poland; Prié Yannick, Université Nantes; Bulteau Samuel, CHU Nantes

Partenaires professionnels: Héritier Anne-Laure, DiverSsity; Streichemberger Romain, C2Care

Durée du projet: 01.04.2025

Montant global du projet: 2'150'000 CHF

Url of the project site: https://www.thcspartnership.eu/funded-projects/thcs-jtc-2024.kl

Statut: Ongoing

Reducing gender bias in detection of autistic spectrum disorders using a co-construction with computer vision and mixed reality exercises

Role: Co-applicant

Financement: SNSF

Description du projet :

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder marked by deficits in social communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviors. Timely diagnosis and intervention are essential for enhancing the long-term prospects of those with ASD. Nonetheless, current diagnostic methods exhibit gender bias, resulting in the underdiagnosis of females with ASD. This project's primary objective is to create a novel, unbiased approach to early ASD detection using a co-construction method involving computer vision and mixed reality exercises. This proposed method addresses ASD diagnosis gender bias by offering an objective, engaging, and accessible detection tool.The multidisciplinary research team composed of Social Work researchers, neurosciences researchers and computer science researchers will structure the project around 4 main workpackages, with 7 specific objectives:1.Determine factors for identifying ASD in women without intellectual disabilities, addressing the unique challenges of diagnosing this population and improving understanding of ASD presentation in females.2.Collaboratively create mixed reality exercises and a computer vision system using input from practitioners and individuals with ASD, ensuring that the developed tools are user-centered, relevant, and effective in addressing the distinct needs and experiences of people with ASD.3.Develop a set of mixed reality exercises and cognitive game tasks designed to evaluate common ASD indicators and behaviors, with particular attention to incorporating gender-specific cues and scenarios.4.Develop a computer vision system capable of behavioral analysis and facial expression recognition, integrated with the mixed reality environment.5.Examine the efficacy of the co-construction approach in minimizing gender bias in ASD detection.6.Improve the accuracy, objectivity, and accessibility of ASD diagnosis by providing an engaging, immersive, and user-friendly diagnostic instrument.7.Increase awareness of gender-specific ASD presentations and encourage the adoption of more inclusive and unbiased diagnostic tools and techniques.The findings of this exploratory study will be used to submit a second SNSF project for a more extensive investigation. To conduct user tests, we have ongoing collaborations with ASD centers in Valais (Clinique Dis7), Vaud (Lavigny), and Geneva. These centers have diagnostic access for all their students. Based on these diagnostics, we can create specific profiles for each user and develop XR activities to detect identified factors.By addressing the existing gender bias in ASD diagnosis, the project aims to contribute to a more equitable understanding and treatment of ASD across genders. The co-construction approach will ensure the developed tools are relevant and effective in addressing the unique needs and experiences of people with ASD. The project is expected to result in improved early detection of ASD, reduced waiting periods for access to care, and increased awareness of the gender-specific presentations of ASD. Ultimately, the project will benefit individuals with ASD and their families by enabling timely access to appropriate interventions and support.

Research team within HES-SO: Matusz Paul , Widmer Antoine , Dini Sarah

Durée du projet: 01.11.2024

Montant global du projet: 600'000 CHF

Url of the project site: https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/220405

Statut: Ongoing

European consortium to determine how complex, real-world environments influence brain development

Role: Collaborator

Financement: European Cooperation in Science and Technology

Description du projet :

The early years of brain development are critically influential for life-long outcomes. During early childhood, neurodevelopmental conditions emerge and vulnerabilities for longer-term problems are sown. Homes, schools and neighbourhoods shape children’s life chances, interacting with individual differences in cognition and behaviour to determine access to resources and quality of life. However, because almost all current research measures behaviour and brain function by taking children away from these natural environments into controlled lab settings, our knowledge of how early life settings shape development is surprisingly limited. We understand very little about the mechanisms through which specific environmental features impact development (e.g. the effects of variation in noise, clutter, social interaction etc); how these vary across European nations; and how they interact with neurodiverse learning styles. This limits us from designing personalised practical interventions to tailor early environments for different individuals. Under this COST Action we shall create the infrastructure and networks to allow for transformative new approaches to quantifying variability in the early life physical and social environments experienced by children across the EU. We will bring together currently siloed areas of expertise across Europe in new methods for studying children in their natural habitats; new perspectives on cultural and neurodiversity; and new ethical and legal frameworks to support large-scale collaborative developmental science. Our network will be a partnership across European nations and with neurodiverse communities to enable our work to be underpinned by co-creation, ensuring we are harnessing state-of-the-art research efforts to generate meaningful and impactful real- world outcomes.

Research team within HES-SO: Matusz Paul

Durée du projet: 22.09.2023

Montant global du projet: 580'000 CHF

Url of the project site: https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA22111/

Statut: Ongoing

Completed

Optimizing Vision reHABilitation with virtual-reality games in paediatric amblyopia (V-HAB)

Role: Collaborator

Financement: European Commission

Description du projet :

To reach for a bottle (motor), we need to be able to identify its properties (attention) and know where in space it is located (3-dimensional (3D) vision). This cascade is however impaired in some developmental disorders of vision, like Paediatric Amblyopia (PA) or lazy eye.
With this proposal, I first aim to gain insights in the underlying deficits of PA, by combining expertise from the vision sciences, cognition and motor control research fields. These insights will provide a deeper understanding of the core deficits of children with PA, and their inter-relationship. I will put specific emphasis on the study of 3D vision and its impact on selective attention and motor planning, as these have previously been understudied, despite their clear impact on vision and potential coexistence in PA. Second, I aim to test the efficiency of a novel, ethological, and engaging 3D games in a virtual reality environment to improve vision in children with PA. Thirdly, I will examine whether the improvements on vision are accompanied by changes in attention and motor control and which are the underlying brain mechanisms of such improvements. Lastly, by using artificial intelligence approaches on treatment outcome, I will be able to provide guidelines toward a personalized medicine tailored to the patient’s needs.
To succeed in this project, I will (i) combine measures of the traditional basic vision tests with novel functional vision evaluation, (ii) quantify uni- and multisensory selective attention with behavioural and brain imaging (electrical neuroimaging) methods, (iii) integrate sensor-based measures of motor planning during reaching, (iv) develop a novel, efficient and ethological virtual reality training to recover 3D vision in children with PA. This project will accumulate clinically relevant results that will be disseminated to the scientific community and communicated to the clinicians and the children’s families through a variety of activities.

Research team within HES-SO: Simon-Martinez Cristina , Müller Henning , Matusz Paul

Partenaires académiques: Micah Murray, University of Lausanne

Durée du projet: 01.01.2021 - 31.12.2022

Montant global du projet: 214'000 CHF

Statut: Completed

Understanding the role of attention in visual rehabilitation: Amblyopia as a model

Role: Main Applicant

Financement: Swiss National Science Foundation

Description du projet :

Content and objectives of the research work

Poor treatment of amblyopia can have serious visual, cognitive and emotional consequences for patients both the short and long term. This project will first allow us to identify the sensory, cognitive and cortical deficits of amblyopia through transdisciplinary and innovative experimental protocol. In a second step, we will test the effectiveness of therapeutic video games, more particularly, virtual reality as an amblyopia treatment. Finally, this project will allow us to establish the respective importance of sensory and cognitive processes in the visual rehabilitation of amblyopia. This project is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration bringing together biomedical engineering, mathematical modeling, neuroscience and ophthalmology. This singular approach to vision disorders is innovative both on a fundamental dimension as well as on an applied dimension.

Research team within HES-SO: Matusz Paul

Partenaires académiques: Prof. Gabrielle Thumann, MD, University Hospital Geneva (HUG); Prof. Heimo Steffen, MD, University Hospital Geneva (HUG); Prof. Daphne Bavelier, PhD, University of Geneva; Prof. Dennis Levi, OD, PhD, UC Berkeley; Prof. Micah Murray, PhD, University Hospital Center - University of Lausanne (CHUV - UNIL)

Partenaires professionnels: Ben Bachus, Vivid Vision

Durée du projet: 01.01.2018 - 01.09.2022

Url of the project site: http://p3.snf.ch/project-174150

Statut: Completed

2025

The threat of paper mills to biomedical & social science journals: The case of the Tanu.pro paper mill in Mind, Brain & Education

Scientific paper

Matusz Paul

Mind, Brain & Education, 2025

PEOPLE@HES-SO Directory and Skills inventory

Matusz Paul

Professeur-e HES Associé-e

Main skills

Brain imaging (EEG, MRI)

Sensory & brain rehabilitation

Neurotechnology

Cognitive development

Movement

Education sciences

Professeur-e HES Associé-e

PEOPLE@HES-SO
Directory and Skills inventory