A Synchronous Motor Imagery Based Neural Physiological Paradigm for Brain Computer Interface Speller

• Main Authors: Lei Cao, Bin Xia, Oladazimi Maysam, Jie Li, Hong Xie, Niels Birbaumer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-05-01
• Series: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
• Subjects: brain computer interface (BCI); motor imagery (MI); Oct-o-spell paradigm; synchronous control; speller
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00274/full

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) speller is a typical BCI-based application to help paralyzed patients express their thoughts. This paper proposed a novel motor imagery based BCI speller with Oct-o-spell paradigm for word input. Furthermore, an intelligent input method was used for improving the performance of the BCI speller. For the English word spelling experiment, we compared synchronous control with previous asynchronous control under the same experimental condition. There were no significant differences between these two control methods in the classification accuracy, information transmission rate (ITR) or letters per minute (LPM). And the accuracy rates of over 70% validated the feasibility for these two control strategies. It was indicated that MI-based synchronous control protocol was feasible for BCI speller. And the efficiency of the predictive text entry (PTE) mode was superior to that of the Non-PTE mode.