Mikel Ostiz Blanco, PhD student of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, has made a research stay for four months at the department of Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Vic (Barcelona). There he has trained with Professor Sergi Grau Carrión, director of department and expert in the field of video games applied to the Education.

The stay is part of the thesis that this engineer and philosopher is carrying out in the group 'Mind-brain' of the ICS and the Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language (BCBL) and the University of Vic, funded by a scholarship of the "La Caixa" Foundation. His purpose is to investigate rhythmic perception in children with dyslexia in order to develop a tool to help them improve their abilities.

As Mikel explains, the first goal of the stay has been formative: "My thesis has a component of psychology-neuroscience in which they advise me very well both at BCBL and at the University of Navarra, but also an important element of video games and multimedia applications. In the stay I have been trained in this field through the tool Unity, through some subjects of the Degree in Multimedia and the Apps & Games Master of this University".

On the other hand, he adds that he has also worked on small tools and video games based on music and rhythm, as the basis of his thesis , exploring different interaction systems, such as tangible elements (on a touch table) and MIDI instruments.

"In this first year of thesis I have focused on the most formative part: the first months on dyslexia and the most important explanatory theories and the last months with the stay in the field of video games," he points out.