Classification of erroneous actions using EEG frequency features: implications for BCI performance

Abstract

Several studies have demonstrated that error-related neuronal signatures can be successfully detected and used to improve the performance of brain-computer interfaces. However, this has been tested mainly in well-controlled environments and based on temporal features, such as the amplitude of event-related potentials. In this study, we propose a classification algorithm combining frequency features and a weighted SVM to detect the neuronal signatures of errors committed in a complex saccadic go/no-go task. We follow the hypothesis that frequency features yield better discrimination performance in complex tasks, generalize better, and require fewer pre-processing steps. When combining temporal and frequency features, we achieved a balanced classification accuracy of 75% - almost the same as using only frequency features. On the other hand, when using only temporal features, the balanced accuracy decreased to 66%. These findings show that subjects' performance can be automatically detected based on frequency features of error-related neuronal signatures. Additionally, our results revealed that features computed in the pre-response time contribute to the discrimination between correct and erroneous responses, which suggests the existence of error-related patterns even before response execution.