Abstract
People with post-stroke motor aphasia know what they would like to say but cannot express it through motor pathways due to disruption of cortical circuits. We present a theoretical background for our hypothesized connection between attention and aphasia rehabilitation and suggest why in this context, Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) use might be beneficial for patients diagnosed with aphasia. Not only could BCI technology provide a communication tool, it might support neuronal plasticity by activating language circuits and thereby boost aphasia recovery. However, stroke may lead to heterogeneous symptoms that might hinder BCI use, which is why the feasibility of this approach needs to be investigated first. In this pilot study, we included five participants diagnosed with post-stroke aphasia. Four participants were initially unable to use the visual P300 speller paradigm. By adjusting the paradigm to their needs, participants could successfully learn to use the speller for communication with accuracies up to 100%. We describe necessary adjustments to the paradigm and present future steps to investigate further this approach.
Highlights
Brain-computer interfacing (BCI) does not require motor control, but instead either willful brain activation or attention allocation to certain stimuli (Wolpaw and Wolpaw, 2012)
We hypothesized patients disgnosed with aphasia to be able to use a P300 speller successfully, we assumed adjustments to existing protocols to be necessary
Using the cardboard changed the usual BCI paradigm such that a target stimulus was classified against background EEG as compared to classifying target vs. non-target stimuli
Summary
Brain-computer interfacing (BCI) does not require motor control, but instead either willful brain activation or attention allocation to certain stimuli (Wolpaw and Wolpaw, 2012). One possible BCI input signal is the P300 which represents a positive deflection in the EEG occurring 300 ms after the onset of a relevant stimulus, or target, presented within a stream of irrelevant stimuli, or non-targets (oddball paradigm, Sutton et al, 1965). In a classic visual P300 spelling paradigm (Farwell and Donchin, 1988), letters of the alphabet are arranged in a matrix of rows and BCIs in Aphasia Rehabilitation columns. The non-target stimuli are to be ignored by the BCI user. The BCI detects the P300 response to the target stimulus cell, displays the target letter on a computer screen and thereby allows for communication (Farwell and Donchin, 1988)
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