Performance Of Based Brain-computer Interface Research Articles

Towards user-centric BCI design: Markov chain-based user assessment for mental imagery EEG-BCIs

Objective. While electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) have many potential clinical applications, their use is impeded by poor performance for many users. To improve BCI performance, either via enhanced signal processing or user training, it is critical to understand and describe each user’s ability to perform mental control tasks and produce discernible EEG patterns. While classification accuracy has predominantly been used to assess user performance, limitations and criticisms of this approach have emerged, thus prompting the need to develop novel user assessment approaches with greater descriptive capability. Here, we propose a combination of unsupervised clustering and Markov chain models to assess and describe user skill. Approach. Using unsupervised K-means clustering, we segmented the EEG signal space into regions representing pattern states that users could produce. A user’s movement through these pattern states while performing different tasks was modeled using Markov chains. Finally, using the steady-state distributions and entropy rates of the Markov chains, we proposed two metrics taskDistinct and relativeTaskInconsistency to assess, respectively, a user’s ability to (i) produce distinct task-specific patterns for each mental task and (ii) maintain consistent patterns during individual tasks. Main results. Analysis of data from 14 adolescents using a three-class BCI revealed significant correlations between the taskDistinct and relativeTaskInconsistency metrics and classification F1 score. Moreover, analysis of the pattern states and Markov chain models yielded descriptive information regarding user performance not immediately apparent from classification accuracy. Significance. Our proposed user assessment method can be used in concert with classifier-based analysis to further understand the extent to which users produce task-specific, time-evolving EEG patterns. In turn, this information could be used to enhance user training or classifier design.

A data expansion technique based on training and testing sample to boost the detection of SSVEPs for brain-computer interfaces

Objective. Currently, steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have achieved the highest interaction accuracy and speed among all BCI paradigms. However, its decoding efficacy depends deeply on the number of training samples, and the system performance would have a dramatic drop when the training dataset decreased to a small size. To date, no study has been reported to incorporate the unsupervised learning information from testing trails into the construction of supervised classification model, which is a potential way to mitigate the overfitting effect of limited samples. Approach. This study proposed a novel method for SSVEPs detection, i.e. cyclic shift trials (CSTs), which could combine unsupervised learning information from test trials and supervised learning information from train trials. Furthermore, since SSVEPs are time-locked and phase-locked to the onset of specific flashes, CST could also expand training samples on the basis of its regularity and periodicity. In order to verify the effectiveness of CST, we designed an online SSVEP-BCI system, and tested this system combined CST with two common classification algorithms, i.e. extended canonical correlation analysis and ensemble task-related component analysis. Main results. CST could significantly enhance the signal to noise ratios of SSVEPs and improve the performance of systems especially for the condition of few training samples and short stimulus time. The online information transfer rate could reach up to 236.19 bits min−1 using 36 s calibration time of only one training sample for each category. Significance. The proposed CST method can take full advantages of supervised learning information from training samples and unsupervised learning information of testing samples. Furthermore, it is a data expansion technique, which can enhance the SSVEP characteristics and reduce dependence on sample size. Above all, CST is a promising method to improve the performance of SSVEP-based BCI without any additional experimental burden.

LMDA-Net:A lightweight multi-dimensional attention network for general EEG-based brain-computer interfaces and interpretability

Electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) pose a challenge for decoding due to their low spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio. Typically, EEG-based recognition of activities and states involves the use of prior neuroscience knowledge to generate quantitative EEG features, which may limit BCI performance. Although neural network-based methods can effectively extract features, they often encounter issues such as poor generalization across datasets, high predicting volatility, and low model interpretability. To address these limitations, we propose a novel lightweight multi-dimensional attention network, called LMDA-Net. By incorporating two novel attention modules designed specifically for EEG signals, the channel attention module and the depth attention module, LMDA-Net is able to effectively integrate features from multiple dimensions, resulting in improved classification performance across various BCI tasks. LMDA-Net was evaluated on four high-impact public datasets, including motor imagery (MI) and P300-Speller, and was compared with other representative models. The experimental results demonstrate that LMDA-Net outperforms other representative methods in terms of classification accuracy and predicting volatility, achieving the highest accuracy in all datasets within 300 training epochs. Ablation experiments further confirm the effectiveness of the channel attention module and the depth attention module. To facilitate an in-depth understanding of the features extracted by LMDA-Net, we propose class-specific neural network feature interpretability algorithms that are suitable for evoked responses and endogenous activities. By mapping the output of the specific layer of LMDA-Net to the time or spatial domain through class activation maps, the resulting feature visualizations can provide interpretable analysis and establish connections with EEG time-spatial analysis in neuroscience. In summary, LMDA-Net shows great potential as a general decoding model for various EEG tasks.

A hybrid steady-state visual evoked response-based brain-computer interface with MEG and EEG

While recent developments in electroencephalogram (EEG)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have enabled a bridge between the brain and external devices with relatively high communication speed, there is still room for improvement. Notably, the phenomenon of “BCI illiteracy,” which refers to the 15%–30% of people who struggle to type or control devices using BCI, remains unsolved, limiting the practical application of BCI systems. The EEG-based BCIs performance is constrained by the low-quality scalp EEG signals due to the attenuation and distortion of the skull. To address these limitations, this study proposes a hybrid BCI system combining EEG with magnetoencephalogram (MEG), a neuroimaging technology not influenced by the volume conduction effect, to boost BCI performance by enhancing signal quality. Comparative experiments involving 22 subjects showed that the steady-state visual evoked response (SSVER) from MEG has a wider range of effective bandwidth and higher signal-to-noise ratio than EEG. Moreover, differences in the spectral and spatiotemporal characteristics of MEG and EEG explain better performance. Simultaneous MEG-EEG recording experiments suggested that the hybrid MEG-EEG BCI achieved a significantly higher information transfer rate than either modality alone (hybrid: 312 ± 17 bits/min, MEG: 272 ± 17 bits/min, EEG: 240 ± 27 bits/min). Moreover, the 40-target classification accuracy of “BCI illiterate” increased from 50% to 95% with the help of MEG. These results highlight the methodological advantages of a hybrid MEG-EEG BCI, suggesting a promising paradigm for implementing high-speed BCIs.

A portable SSVEP-BCI system for rehabilitation exoskeleton in augmented reality environment

In order to strengthen the participation of stroke patients in rehabilitation training and weaken the dependence of steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) on external stimuli equipment, we build an augmented-reality-based brain-computer interface (AR-BCI) system applied to rehabilitation exoskeleton. The system uses HoloLens to design a 4-category BCI, and adopts the sequential logic decoding method to control sixteen rehabilitation movements. In offline experiments, the performance of AR-BCI is compared with computer screen-based brain-computer interface (CS-BCI), and the effects of data length, number and position of electrodes on the performance of BCI are studied. Then, the instruction classification accuracy of AR-BCI and movement accuracy of exoskeleton are evaluated in online rehabilitation training. The average recognition accuracy of AR-BCI is 90.2% in offline experiments, which is smaller gap with CS-BCI. The recognition accuracy still reaches more than 90% when only Oz and O2 electrodes are used. The online results show that the instruction classification accuracy of AR-BCI is 88.9% and the averaged information transfer rates (ITR) is 30.01 bits min−1 under the data length of 2.5 s. The movement accuracy of exoskeleton is 91.12% with the ITR of 31.63 bits min−1, which is 2.2% higher than instruction recognition accuracy of AR-BCI. These results show that AR-BCI provides a high-performance and more friendly human–computer interaction method, and greatly improves the application potential of wearable BCI.

A study of action difference on motor imagery based on delayed matching posture task

Objective. Motor imagery (MI)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide an additional control pathway for people by decoding the intention of action imagination. The way people imagine greatly affects MI-BCI performance. Action itself is one of the factors that influence the way people imagine. Whether the different actions cause a difference in the MI performance is unknown. What is more important is how to manifest this action difference in the process of imagery, which has the potential to guide people to use their individualized actions to imagine more effectively. Approach. To explore action differences, this study proposes a novel paradigm named as action observation based delayed matching posture task. Ten subjects are required to observe, memorize, match, and imagine three types of actions (cutting, grasping and writing) given by visual images or videos, to accomplish the phases of encoding, retrieval and reinforcement of MI. Event-related potential (ERP), MI features, and classification accuracy of the left or the right hand are used to evaluate the effect of the action difference on the MI difference. Main results. Action differences cause different feature distributions, resulting in that the accuracy with high event-related (de)synchronization (ERD/ERS) is 27.75% higher than the ones with low ERD/ERS (p < 0.05), which indicates that the action difference has impact on the MI difference and the BCI performance. In addition, significant differences in the ERP amplitudes exists among the three actions: the amplitude of P300-N200 potential reaches 9.28 μV of grasping, 5.64 μV and 5.25 μV higher than the cutting and the writing, respectively (p < 0.05). Significance. The ERP amplitudes derived from the supplementary motor area shows positive correlation to the MI classification accuracy, implying that the ERP might be an index of the MI performance when the people is faced with action selection. This study demonstrates that the MI difference is related to the action difference, and can be manifested by the ERP, which is important for improving MI training by selecting suitable action; the relationship between the ERP and the MI provides a novel index to find the suitable action to set up an individualized BCI and improve the performance further.

A Review of Online Classification Performance in Motor Imagery-Based Brain–Computer Interfaces for Stroke Neurorehabilitation

Motor imagery (MI)-based brain–computer interfaces (BCI) have shown increased potential for the rehabilitation of stroke patients; nonetheless, their implementation in clinical practice has been restricted due to their low accuracy performance. To date, although a lot of research has been carried out in benchmarking and highlighting the most valuable classification algorithms in BCI configurations, most of them use offline data and are not from real BCI performance during the closed-loop (or online) sessions. Since rehabilitation training relies on the availability of an accurate feedback system, we surveyed articles of current and past EEG-based BCI frameworks who report the online classification of the movement of two upper limbs in both healthy volunteers and stroke patients. We found that the recently developed deep-learning methods do not outperform the traditional machine-learning algorithms. In addition, patients and healthy subjects exhibit similar classification accuracy in current BCI configurations. Lastly, in terms of neurofeedback modality, functional electrical stimulation (FES) yielded the best performance compared to non-FES systems.

A Canonical Correlation Analysis-Based Transfer Learning Framework for Enhancing the Performance of SSVEP-Based BCIs.

A steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)- based brain-computer interface (BCI) can either achieve high classification accuracy in the case of sufficient training data or suppress the training stage at the cost of low accuracy. Although some researches attempted to conquer the dilemma between performance and practicality, a highly effective approach has not yet been established. In this paper, we propose a canonical correlation analysis (CCA)-based transfer learning framework for improving the performance of an SSVEP BCI and reducing its calibration effort. Three spatial filters are optimized by a CCA algorithm with intra- and inter-subject EEG data (IISCCA), two template signals are estimated separately with the EEG data from the target subject and a set of source subjects and six coefficients are yielded by correlation analysis between a testing signal and each of the two templates after they are filtered by each of the three spatial filters. The feature signal used for classification is extracted by the sum of squared coefficients multiplied by their signs and the frequency of the testing signal is recognized by template matching. To reduce the individual discrepancy between subjects, an accuracy-based subject selection (ASS) algorithm is developed for screening those source subjects whose EEG data are more similar to those of the target subject. The proposed ASS-IISCCA integrates both subject-specific models and subject-independent information for the frequency recognition of SSVEP signals. The performance of ASS-IISCCA was evaluated on a benchmark data set with 35 subjects and compared with the state-of-the-art algorithm task-related component analysis (TRCA). The results show that ASS-IISCCA can significantly improve the performance of SSVEP BCIs with a small number of training trials from a new user, thus helping to facilitate their applications in real world.

A Novel SSVEP Brain-Computer Interface System Based on Simultaneous Modulation of Luminance and Motion.

Steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have received significant attention owing to their high information transfer rate (ITR) and low training requirements. Previous SSVEP-based BCIs mostly adopt the stationary visual flickers where only a few studies have explored the effect of moving visual flickers on the SSVEP-BCI. In this study, a novel stimulus encoding method based on the simultaneous modulation of luminance and motion was proposed. We adopted the sampled sinusoidal stimulation method to encode the frequencies and phases of stimulus targets. In addition to luminance modulation, at the same time, visual flickers also moved horizontally towards right and left at different frequencies (i.e., 0, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 Hz) following a sinusoidal function. Accordingly, a nine-target SSVEP-BCI was built to evaluate the influence of motion modulation on the BCI performance. Filter bank canonical correlation analysis (FBCCA) approach was adopted to identify the stimulus targets. Offline experimental results of 17 subjects revealed that the system performance decreased with the increase of superimposed horizontal periodic motion frequency. Our online experimental results showed that the subjects achieved 85.00 ± 6.77 % and 83.15 ± 9.88 % accuracy for the superimposed horizontal periodic motion frequencies of 0 and 0.2 Hz, respectively. These results verified the feasibility of the proposed systems. In addition, the system with 0.2 Hz horizontal motion frequency provided the best visual experience for subjects. These results indicated that moving visual stimulus can provide an alternative option for SSVEP-BCIs. Furthermore, the proposed paradigm is expected to develop a more comfortable BCI system.

Cross-Subject Transfer Learning for Boosting Recognition Performance in SSVEP-based BCIs.

Steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been substantially studied in recent years due to their fast communication rate and high signal-to-noise ratio. The transfer learning is typically utilized to improve the performance of SSVEP-based BCIs with auxiliary data from the source domain. This study proposed an inter-subject transfer learning method for enhancing SSVEP recognition performance through transferred templates and transferred spatial filters. In our method, the spatial filter was trained via multiple covariance maximization to extract SSVEP-related information. The relationships between the training trial, the individual template, and the artificially constructed reference are involved in the training process. The spatial filters are applied to the above templates to form two new transferred templates, and the transferred spatial filters are obtained accordingly via the least-square regression. The contribution scores of different source subjects can be calculated based on the distance between the source subject and the target subject. Finally, a four-dimensional feature vector is constructed for SSVEP detection. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, a publicly available dataset and a self-collected dataset were employed for performance evaluation. The extensive experimental results validated the feasibility of the proposed method for improving SSVEP detection.

Novel hybrid visual stimuli incorporating periodic motions into conventional flickering or pattern-reversal visual stimuli for steady-state visual evoked potential-based brain-computer interfaces.

In this study, we proposed a new type of hybrid visual stimuli for steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), which incorporate various periodic motions into conventional flickering stimuli (FS) or pattern reversal stimuli (PRS). Furthermore, we investigated optimal periodic motions for each FS and PRS to enhance the performance of SSVEP-based BCIs. Periodic motions were implemented by changing the size of the stimulus according to four different temporal functions denoted by none, square, triangular, and sine, yielding a total of eight hybrid visual stimuli. Additionally, we developed the extended version of filter bank canonical correlation analysis (FBCCA), which is a state-of-the-art training-free classification algorithm for SSVEP-based BCIs, to enhance the classification accuracy for PRS-based hybrid visual stimuli. Twenty healthy individuals participated in the SSVEP-based BCI experiment to discriminate four visual stimuli with different frequencies. An average classification accuracy and information transfer rate (ITR) were evaluated to compare the performances of SSVEP-based BCIs for different hybrid visual stimuli. Additionally, the user's visual fatigue for each of the hybrid visual stimuli was also evaluated. As the result, for FS, the highest performances were reported when the periodic motion of the sine waveform was incorporated for all window sizes except for 3 s. For PRS, the periodic motion of the square waveform showed the highest classification accuracies for all tested window sizes. A significant statistical difference in the performance between the two best stimuli was not observed. The averaged fatigue scores were reported to be 5.3 ± 2.05 and 4.05 ± 1.28 for FS with sine-wave periodic motion and PRS with square-wave periodic motion, respectively. Consequently, our results demonstrated that FS with sine-wave periodic motion and PRS with square-wave periodic motion could effectively improve the BCI performances compared to conventional FS and PRS. In addition, thanks to its low visual fatigue, PRS with square-wave periodic motion can be regarded as the most appropriate visual stimulus for the long-term use of SSVEP-based BCIs, particularly for window sizes equal to or larger than 2 s.

Online Adaptation Boosts SSVEP-Based BCI Performance.

A user-friendly steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) prefers no calibration for its target recognition algorithm, however, the existing calibration-free schemes perform still far behind their calibration-based counterparts. To tackle this issue, learning online from the subject's unlabeled data is investigated as a potential approach to boost the performance of the calibration-free SSVEP-based BCIs. An online adaptation scheme is developed to tune the spatial filters using the online unlabeled data from previous trials, and then developing the online adaptive canonical correlation analysis (OACCA) method. A simulation study on two public SSVEP datasets (Dataset I and II) with a total of 105 subjects demonstrated that the proposed online adaptation scheme can boost the CCA's averaged information transfer rate (ITR) from 94.60 to 158.87 bits/min in Dataset I and from 85.80 to 123.91 bits/min in Dataset II. Furthermore, in our online experiment it boosted the CCA's ITR from 55.81 bits/min to 95.73 bits/min. More importantly, this online adaptation scheme can be easily combined with any spatial filtering-based algorithms to achieve online learning. By online adaptation, the proposed OACCA performed much better than the calibration-free CCA, and comparable to the calibration-based algorithms. This work provides a general way for the SSVEP-based BCIs to learn online from unlabeled data and thus avoid calibration.

An MVMD-CCA Recognition Algorithm in SSVEP-Based BCI and Its Application in Robot Control.

This article proposes a novel recognition algorithm for the steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) system. By combining the advantages of multivariate variational mode decomposition (MVMD) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA), an MVMD-CCA algorithm is investigated to improve the detection ability of SSVEP electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. In comparison with the classical filter bank canonical correlation analysis (FBCCA), the nonlinear and non-stationary EEG signals are decomposed into a fixed number of sub-bands by MVMD, which can enhance the effect of SSVEP-related sub-bands. The experimental results show that MVMD-CCA can effectively reduce the influence of noise and EEG artifacts and improve the performance of SSVEP-based BCI. The offline experiments show that the average accuracies of MVMD-CCA in the training dataset and testing dataset are improved by 3.08% and 1.67%, respectively. In the SSVEP-based online robotic manipulator grasping experiment, the recognition accuracies of the four subjects are 92.5%, 93.33%, 90.83%, and 91.67%, respectively.

Effect of background luminance of visual stimulus on elicited steady-state visual evoked potentials

Steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain– computer interfaces (BCIs) have been widely studied. Considerable progress has been made in the aspects of stimulus coding, electroencephalogram processing, and recognition algorithms to enhance system performance. The properties of SSVEP have been demonstrated to be highly sensitive to stimulus luminance. However, thus far, there have been very few reports on the impact of background luminance on the system performance of SSVEP-based BCIs. This study investigated the impact of stimulus background luminance on SSVEPs. Specifically, this study compared two types of background luminance, i.e., (1) black luminance [red, green, blue (rgb): (0, 0, 0)] and (2) gray luminance [rgb: (128, 128, 128)], and determined their effect on the classification performance of SSVEPs at the stimulus frequencies of 9, 11, 13, and 15 Hz. The offline results from nine healthy subjects showed that compared with the gray background luminance, the black background luminance induced larger SSVEP amplitude and larger signal-to-noise ratio, resulting in a better classification accuracy. These results suggest that the background luminance of visual stimulus has a considerable effect on the SSVEP and therefore has a potential to improve the BCI performance.

Enhanced System Robustness of Asynchronous BCI in Augmented Reality Using Steady-State Motion Visual Evoked Potential.

This study evaluated the effect of change in background on steady state visually evoked potentials (SSVEP) and steady state motion visually evoked potentials (SSMVEP) based brain computer interfaces (BCI) in a small-profile augmented reality (AR) headset. A four target SSVEP and SSMVEP BCI was implemented using the Cognixion AR headset prototype. An active (AB) and a non-active background (NB) were evaluated. The signal characteristics and classification performance of the two BCI paradigms were studied. Offline analysis was performed using canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and complex-spectrum based convolutional neural network (C-CNN). Finally, the asynchronous pseudo-online performance of the SSMVEP BCI was evaluated. Signal analysis revealed that the SSMVEP stimulus was more robust to change in background compared to SSVEP stimulus in AR. The decoding performance revealed that the C-CNN method outperformed CCA for both stimulus types and NB background, in agreement with results in the literature. The average offline accuracies for W = 1 s of C-CNN were (NB vs. AB): SSVEP: 82% ±15% vs. 60% ±21% and SSMVEP: 71.4% ± 22% vs. 63.5% ± 18%. Additionally, for W = 2 s, the AR-SSMVEP BCI with the C-CNN method was 83.3% ± 27% (NB) and 74.1% ±22% (AB). The results suggest that with the C-CNN method, the AR-SSMVEP BCI is both robust to change in background conditions and provides high decoding accuracy compared to the AR-SSVEP BCI. This study presents novel results that highlight the robustness and practical application of SSMVEP BCIs developed with a low-cost AR headset.

Influence of the Number of Channels and Classification Algorithm on the Performance Robustness to Electrode Shift in Steady-State Visual Evoked Potential-Based Brain-Computer Interfaces.

There remains an active investigation on elevating the classification accuracy and information transfer rate of brain-computer interfaces based on steady-state visual evoked potential. However, it has often been ignored that the performance of steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can be affected through the minor displacement of the electrodes from their optimal locations in practical applications because of the mislocation of electrodes and/or concurrent use of electroencephalography (EEG) devices with external devices, such as virtual reality headsets. In this study, we evaluated the performance robustness of SSVEP-based BCIs with respect to the changes in electrode locations for various channel configurations and classification algorithms. Our experiments involved 21 participants, where EEG signals were recorded from the scalp electrodes densely attached to the occipital area of the participants. The classification accuracies for all the possible cases of electrode location shifts for various channel configurations (1–3 channels) were calculated using five training-free SSVEP classification algorithms, i.e., the canonical correlation analysis (CCA), extended CCA, filter bank CCA, multivariate synchronization index (MSI), and extended MSI (EMSI). Then, the performances of the BCIs were evaluated using two measures, i.e., the average classification accuracy (ACA) across the electrode shifts and robustness to the electrode shift (RES). Our results showed that the ACA increased with an increase in the number of channels regardless of the algorithm. However, the RES was enhanced with an increase in the number of channels only when MSI and EMSI were employed. While both ACA and RES values for the five algorithms were similar under the single-channel condition, both ACA and RES values for MSI and EMSI were higher than those of the other algorithms under the multichannel (i.e., two or three electrodes) conditions. In addition, EMSI outperformed MSI when comparing the ACA and RES values under the multichannel conditions. In conclusion, our results suggested that the use of multichannel configuration and employment of EMSI could make the performance of SSVEP-based BCIs more robust to the electrode shift from the optimal locations.

Multi-view optimization of time-frequency common spatial patterns for brain-computer interfaces

BackgroundCommon spatial pattern (CSP) is a prevalent method applied to feature extraction in motor imagery (MI)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) recorded by electroencephalogram (EEG). The selection of time windows and frequency bands prominently affects the performance of CSP algorithms. Concerning the joint optimization of these two parameters, several studies have utilized a unified framework based on different feature selection strategies and achieved considerable improvement. However, during the feature selection process, useful information could be discarded inevitably and the underlying internal structure of features could be neglected. New methodIn this paper, we proposed a novel framework termed time window filter bank common spatial pattern with multi-view optimization (TWFBCSP-MVO) to further boost the decoding of MI tasks. Concretely, after extracting CSP features from different time-frequency decompositions of EEG signals, a preliminary screening strategy based on variance ratio was devised to filter out the unrelated spatial patterns. We then introduced a multi-view learning strategy for the simultaneous optimization of time windows and frequency bands. A support vector machine classifier was trained to determine the output of the brain. ResultsAn experimental study was conducted on two public datasets to verify the effectiveness of TWFBCSP-MVO. Results showed that the proposed TWFBCSP-MVO could help improve the performance of MI classification. Comparison with existing methodsIn comparison to other competing methods, the proposed method performed significantly better (p<0.01). ConclusionsThe proposed method is a promising contestant to improve the performance of practical MI-based BCIs.

Information Bottleneck as Optimisation Method for SSVEP-Based BCI.

In this study, the information bottleneck method is proposed as an optimisation method for steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI). The information bottleneck is an information-theoretic optimisation method for solving problems with a trade-off between preserving meaningful information and compression. Its main practical application in machine learning is in representation learning or feature extraction. In this study, we use the information bottleneck to find optimal classification rule for a BCI. This is a novel application for the information bottleneck. This approach is particularly suitable for BCIs since the information bottleneck optimises the amount of information transferred by the BCI. Steady-state visual evoked potential-based BCIs often classify targets using very simple rules like choosing the class corresponding to the largest feature value. We call this classifier the arg max classifier. It is unlikely that this approach is optimal, and in this study, we propose a classification method specifically designed to optimise the performance measure of BCIs. This approach gives an advantage over standard machine learning methods, which aim to optimise different measures. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested on two publicly available datasets in offline experiments. We use the standard power spectral density analysis (PSDA) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) feature extraction methods on one dataset and show that the current approach outperforms most of the related studies on this dataset. On the second dataset, we use the task-related component analysis (TRCA) method and demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the standard argmax classification rule in terms of information transfer rate when using a small number of classes. To our knowledge, this is the first time the information bottleneck is used in the context of SSVEP-based BCIs. The approach is unique in the sense that optimisation is done over the space of classification functions. It potentially improves the performance of BCIs and makes it easier to calibrate the system for different subjects.

Denoising Autoencoder-Based Feature Extraction to Robust SSVEP-Based BCIs

For subjects with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the verbal and nonverbal communication is greatly impaired. Steady state visually evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain computer interfaces (BCIs) is one of successful alternative augmentative communications to help subjects with ALS communicate with others or devices. For practical applications, the performance of SSVEP-based BCIs is severely reduced by the effects of noises. Therefore, developing robust SSVEP-based BCIs is very important to help subjects communicate with others or devices. In this study, a noise suppression-based feature extraction and deep neural network are proposed to develop a robust SSVEP-based BCI. To suppress the effects of noises, a denoising autoencoder is proposed to extract the denoising features. To obtain an acceptable recognition result for practical applications, the deep neural network is used to find the decision results of SSVEP-based BCIs. The experimental results showed that the proposed approaches can effectively suppress the effects of noises and the performance of SSVEP-based BCIs can be greatly improved. Besides, the deep neural network outperforms other approaches. Therefore, the proposed robust SSVEP-based BCI is very useful for practical applications.

A brain-actuated robotic arm system using non-invasive hybrid brain–computer interface and shared control strategy

Objective. The electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) have been used in the control of robotic arms. The performance of non-invasive BCIs may not be satisfactory due to the poor quality of EEG signals, so the shared control strategies were tried as an alternative solution. However, most of the existing shared control methods set the arbitration rules manually, which highly depended on the specific tasks and developer’s experience. In this study, we proposed a novel shared control model that automatically optimized the control commands in a dynamical way based on the context in real-time control. Besides, we employed the hybrid BCI to better allocate commands with multiple functions. The system allowed non-invasive BCI users to manipulate a robotic arm moving in a three-dimensional (3D) space and complete a pick-place task of multiple objects. Approach. Taking the scene information obtained by computer vision as a knowledge base, a machine agent was designed to infer the user’s intention and generate automatic commands. Based on the inference confidence and user’s characteristic, the proposed shared control model fused the machine autonomy and human intention dynamically for robotic arm motion optimization during the online control. In addition, we introduced a hybrid BCI scheme that applied steady-state visual evoked potentials and motor imagery to the divided primary and secondary BCI interfaces to better allocate the BCI resources (e.g. decoding computing power, screen occupation) and realize the multi-dimensional control of the robotic arm. Main results. Eleven subjects participated in the online experiments of picking and placing five objects that scattered at different positions in a 3D workspace. The results showed that most of the subjects could control the robotic arm to complete accurate and robust picking task with an average success rate of approximately 85% under the shared control strategy, while the average success rate of placing task controlled by pure BCI was 50% approximately. Significance. In this paper, we proposed a novel shared controller for motion automatic optimization, together with a hybrid BCI control scheme that allocated paradigms according to the importance of commands to realize multi-dimensional and effective control of a robotic arm. Our study indicated that the shared control strategy with hybrid BCI could greatly improve the performance of the brain-actuated robotic arm system.