A two-target paradigm for an auditory brain-computer interface: A preliminary study

Abstract

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), which are capable of operating external devices using human brain activity, have recently been actively studied. Previous studies have developed an auditory BCI using event-related potential (P300) for estimating the single target of a sound source direction to which the subjects pay attention. In this study, we proposed a new paradigm using two targets instead of a conventional one-target paradigm and examined whether it was possible to increase the information transfer rate using this two-target paradigm. We conducted experiments adopting proposed two-target paradigm where two out of six sound directions were defined as a target. Considering the conditions obtained more than 70 % of identification rate of the target direction of sound, results for two-target paradigm showed higher information transfer rates than that for a conventional one-target paradigm for three out of five subjects. From the above, increasing of the target direction might be an effective means to increase information transfer rate of auditory BCI.