Abstract
Despite technical advances in brain machine interfaces (BMI), for as-yet unknown reasons the ability to control a BMI remains limited to a subset of users. We investigate whether individual differences in BMI control based on motor imagery (MI) are related to differences in MI ability. We assessed whether differences in kinesthetic and visual MI, in the behavioral accuracy of MI, and in electroencephalographic variables, were able to differentiate between high- versus low-aptitude BMI users. High-aptitude BMI users showed higher MI accuracy as captured by subjective and behavioral measurements, pointing to a prominent role of kinesthetic rather than visual imagery. Additionally, for the first time, we applied mental chronometry, a measure quantifying the degree to which imagined and executed movements share a similar temporal profile. We also identified enhanced lateralized μ-band oscillations over sensorimotor cortices during MI in high- versus low-aptitude BMI users. These findings reveal that subjective, behavioral, and EEG measurements of MI are intimately linked to BMI control. We propose that poor BMI control cannot be ascribed only to intrinsic limitations of EEG recordings and that specific questionnaires and mental chronometry can be used as predictors of BMI performance (without the need to record EEG activity).
Highlights
Non-invasive brain machine interfaces (BMI) have enabled humans to control a variety of external devices through real-time decoding of brain activity
The mean BMI performance was computed as the percentage of time frames in which the cursor moved in the cued direction
We note that the threshold around 70% of accuracy is in accordance with that previously proposed by others authors to discriminate effective BMI-control from chance in a 2-class paradigm[5,28]
Summary
Non-invasive brain machine interfaces (BMI) have enabled humans to control a variety of external devices through real-time decoding of brain activity. It should be noted that as with BMI control skills, MI ability, that is the ability to mentally perform or rehearse an action without executing it (see for reviews)[18,19], presents marked differences across the general population These differences have been extensively evaluated in the field of cognitive neuroscience using subjective methods such are the aforementioned self-reporting motor-imagery questionnaires, and through different behavioral measures. These include objective measurements assessing the relationship between the duration of executed and imaged movements, such as the mental chronometry task[20,21,22]. Since BMI-based control has been related to specific lateralized activity in bilateral motor and premotor cortices[8,27], we hypothesized that the lateralization of cortical activity recorded during pure MI (that is without visual feedback as during BMI control) would discriminate between high- and low-aptitude BMI users
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