A neurobehavioural framework for autonomous animation of virtual human faces

Abstract

We describe a neurobehavioural modeling and visual computing framework for the integration of realistic interactive computer graphics with neural systems modelling, allowing real-time autonomous facial animation and interactive visualization of the underlying neural network models. The system has been designed to integrate and interconnect a wide range of computational neuroscience models to construct embodied interactive psychobiological models of behaviour. An example application of the framework combines models of the facial motor system, physiologically based emotional systems, and basic neural systems involved in early interactive behaviour and learning and embodies them in a virtual infant rendered with realistic computer graphics. The model reacts in real time to visual and auditory input and its own evolving internal processes as a dynamic system. The live state of the model which generates the resulting facial behaviour can be visualized through graphs and schematics or by exploring the activity mapped to the underlying neuroanatomy.