Influence of external cues on synchronized Brain-Computer Interface based on movement related cortical potentials

Abstract

Brain-Computer Interfacing is a promising approach to aid the rehabilitation process of patients suffering the consequences of neurological injuries. It has been shown in recent literature that a closed-loop setup utilizing the detection of movement-related cortical potentials (MRCP) to generate afferent feedback can efficiently help the stroke patients to regain or improve motor-abilities. The above study used the synchronized BCI paradigm, because the subject may not be able to perform the necessary motor tasks all by themselves. In synchronized BCI, a cue is presented to indicate the exact time for an imagination task that is used as a training session. It is not clear, whether or not the property of the presented cue has any influence on the resulting potentials, which is the subject of investigation in this work. The results suggest that different types of cues i.e. audio and visual, have a significant effect on the resulting MRCP. The MRCP from the auditory-based cue paradigm showed a significantly lager amplitude before Large Laplacian spatial filtering. Additionally, it was found that this typical filter might not be optimal for the auditory paradigm, as it significantly reduces the amplitude of the peaking activity of MRCP.