EEG-Based Brain-Computer Interface for Emotional Involvement in Games Through Music

Abstract

The reliability of commercial non-invasive BCI (Brain Computer Interface) devices and the lower cost of these EEG-based systems, determined the increasing interest in their application in different research fields, also thanks to the portability of the equipment. The latter feature makes BCI devices particularly suited for entertainment applications especially due to the possibility to detect the mental state of the users. The relationship between emotions and entertainment is obvious, as the influence of music in human emotional states. While BCI devices represent a challenge in gaming motion control, they have been successfully applied in music production (Dan et al., PloS ONE, 2009) and composition (Hamadicharef et al., CW2010 282–286, 2010). In our previous work (Folgieri et al., Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, San Francisco, USA) we focused on conscious production of music notes with the aim of developing a prototype for applications in entertainment. In this work we trace the state-of-the art of our research and present our opinion on possible applications of the preliminary obtained results.