Research Projects

Emotion is a complex reaction of internal feelings, thoughts, and responses to physical or psychological stimuli. It plays a significant role in human decisions and can be captured through facial expressions, speech, gestures, and physiological signs like skin conductance, EEG, and ECG. Depression affects approximately 280 million people worldwide, with suicide being the fourth leading cause of death for people aged 15-29. In India, around 57 million people suffer from depression. Emotion has a significant impact on cognitive processes in learning, such as perception, focus, logic, and problem-solving. Depressed individuals are sad, irritable, and lose interest in activities. Depression is most commonly seen in students, with 37.7%, 13.1%, and 2.4% having moderate, severe, and extremely severe depressions respectively. This study aims to develop an artificial intelligence-enabled students' emotion identification tool for automatic assessment of emotions. The tool will help clinicians gain a better understanding of a student's mental health at an early stage, making early identification and treatment easier. The proposed system will involve 18-year-olds from educational institutions, who will watch a movie, clip, or play a computer game to induce certain emotions. The EEG, face, and voice will be captured during this process, and a multimodality dataset will be developed. The proposed system is planned to be implemented in educational institutions in and around Manipal, as youngsters are more susceptible to mental health issues like depression and stress. This system can help teachers and schools understand students' emotions and tackle their problems, providing an early detector and real-time solution for capturing their mental health and improving their focus on studies.