A cognitive brain\u2013computer interface monitoring sustained attentional variations during a continuous task

Antoine Gaume,François-Benoît Vialatte,Gérard Dreyfus

doi:10.1007/s11571-019-09521-4

Abstract

We introduce a cognitive brain–computer interface based on a continuous performance task for the monitoring of variations of visual sustained attention, i.e. the self-directed maintenance of cognitive focus in non-arousing conditions while possibly ignoring distractors and avoiding mind wandering. We introduce a visual sustained attention continuous performance task with three levels of task difficulty. Pairwise discrimination of these task difficulties from electroencephalographic features was performed using a leave-one-subject-out cross validation approach. Features were selected using the orthogonal forward regression supervised feature selection method. Cognitive load was best predicted using a combination of prefrontal theta power, broad spatial range gamma power, fronto-central beta power, and fronto-central alpha power. Generalization performance estimates for pairwise classification of task difficulty using these features reached 75% for 5 s epochs, and 85% for 30 s epochs.

Highlights

Since its first definition by William James a century ago (James 1890), attention has been generally defined by its cognitive role in the information processing occurring in the brain, rather than by its neuronal substrate or physiological function
We introduce a cognitive brain–computer interface based on a continuous performance task for the monitoring of variations of visual sustained attention, i.e. the self-directed maintenance of cognitive focus in non-arousing conditions while possibly ignoring distractors and avoiding mind wandering
The task we developed is different from static Continuous performance task (CPT) but keeps the idea that the evaluation of sustained attention requires a continuous involvement of the subject

Summary

Introduction

Since its first definition by William James a century ago (James 1890), attention has been generally defined by its cognitive role in the information processing occurring in the brain, rather than by its neuronal substrate or physiological function. This way of defining attention is what makes it so complex and difficult to study (Richard 1980). Attention becomes responsible for selection of relevant activities, and for inhibition of distracting stimuli This model includes every cognitive task the brain has to run in his theory of attention and not the process of selecting between competing simultaneous stimuli, on which the earlier bottleneck theories had focused. Attention was modelled from a neurocognitive perspective (Posner and Petersen 1989; Petersen and Posner 2012), as a unified system for the control of mental

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Conclusion