The paper entitled “Recognition of blinks activity patterns during stress conditions using CNN and Markovian analysis”, co-authored by the researcher from the Institute of Computer Science, FORTH and from the Institute of Agrifood and Life Sciences the Research Centre of the Hellenic Mediterranean University Giorgos Giannakakis (https://users.ics.forth.gr/~ggian) and the professor of School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, HMU Kostas Marias, received the Best Paper Award 2021 from the journal Signals. The evaluation included the paper originality, significance, citations, and downloads.

The research work was the result of the collaboration with the postdoctoral researcher Alexandra Korda from the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Luebeck, Germany, and the professors P. Asvestas, E. Ventouras, from the department of Biomedical Engineering, University of West Attica, N. Smyrnis from the Department of Psychiatry, Medical School of Athens and G. Matsopoulos from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NTUA.

The research work investigated the eye blinks behaviour under psychological stress conditions. Patterns of blink sequences due to stress were identified through Markovian Models and Artificial Neural Networks. According to the analysis, the semi-voluntary process of blink generation may operate in two ‘‘attractor” states, the short and long inter blinks intervals (IBI) in the experimental stress protocol performed.

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/signals/awards/1583

The paper is available in the link https://doi.org/10.3390/signals2010006