TY - JOUR A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Hammer, Eva Maria A1 - Kleih, Sonja Claudia A1 - Bogdan, Martin A1 - Rosenstiel, Wolfgang A1 - Birbaumer, Niels A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Prediction of Auditory and Visual P300 Brain-Computer Interface Aptitude JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Objective Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide a non-muscular communication channel for patients with late-stage motoneuron disease (e.g., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)) or otherwise motor impaired people and are also used for motor rehabilitation in chronic stroke. Differences in the ability to use a BCI vary from person to person and from session to session. A reliable predictor of aptitude would allow for the selection of suitable BCI paradigms. For this reason, we investigated whether P300 BCI aptitude could be predicted from a short experiment with a standard auditory oddball. Methods Forty healthy participants performed an electroencephalography (EEG) based visual and auditory P300-BCI spelling task in a single session. In addition, prior to each session an auditory oddball was presented. Features extracted from the auditory oddball were analyzed with respect to predictive power for BCI aptitude. Results Correlation between auditory oddball response and P300 BCI accuracy revealed a strong relationship between accuracy and N2 amplitude and the amplitude of a late ERP component between 400 and 600 ms. Interestingly, the P3 amplitude of the auditory oddball response was not correlated with accuracy. Conclusions Event-related potentials recorded during a standard auditory oddball session moderately predict aptitude in an audiory and highly in a visual P300 BCI. The predictor will allow for faster paradigm selection. Significance Our method will reduce strain on patients because unsuccessful training may be avoided, provided the results can be generalized to the patient population. KW - experimental design KW - acoustic signals KW - amyotrophic lateral sclerosis KW - man-computer interface KW - electroencephalography KW - event-related potentials KW - physical properties KW - vision Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-130327 VL - 8 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kleih, Sonja C. A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Empathy, motivation, and P300-BCI performance JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Motivation moderately influences brain–computer interface (BCI) performance in healthy subjects when monetary reward is used to manipulate extrinsic motivation. However, the motivation of severely paralyzed patients, who are potentially in need for BCI, could mainly be internal and thus, an intrinsic motivator may be more powerful. Also healthy subjects who participate in BCI studies could be internally motivated as they may wish to contribute to research and thus extrinsic motivation by monetary reward would be less important than the content of the study. In this respect, motivation could be defined as “motivation-to-help.” The aim of this study was to investigate, whether subjects with high motivation for helping and who are highly empathic would perform better with a BCI controlled by event-related potentials (P300-BCI). We included N = 20 healthy young participants naïve to BCI and grouped them according to their motivation for participating in a BCI study in a low and highly motivated group. Motivation was further manipulated with interesting or boring presentations about BCI and the possibility to help patients. Motivation for helping did neither influence BCI performance nor the P300 amplitude. Post hoc, subjects were re-grouped according to their ability for perspective taking. We found significantly higher P300 amplitudes on parietal electrodes in participants with a low ability for perspective taking and therefore, lower empathy, as compared to participants with higher empathy. The lack of an effect of motivation on BCI performance contradicts previous findings and thus, requires further investigation. We speculate that subjects with higher empathy who are good perspective takers with regards to patients in potential need of BCI, may be more emotionally involved and therefore, less able to allocate attention on the BCI task at hand. KW - psychological variables KW - empathy KW - motivation KW - brain–computer interface KW - ERP KW - P300 Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-130559 VL - 7 IS - 642 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Ruf, Carolin Anne A1 - Furdea, Adrian A1 - Pasqualotto, Emanuele A1 - De Massari, Daniele A1 - van der Heiden, Linda A1 - Bogdan, Martin A1 - Rosenstiel, Wolfgang A1 - Birbaumer, Niels A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Matuz, Tamara T1 - Prediction of P300 BCI Aptitude in Severe Motor Impairment JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide a non-muscular communication channel for persons with severe motor impairments. Previous studies have shown that the aptitude with which a BCI can be controlled varies from person to person. A reliable predictor of performance could facilitate selection of a suitable BCI paradigm. Eleven severely motor impaired participants performed three sessions of a P300 BCI web browsing task. Before each session auditory oddball data were collected to predict the BCI aptitude of the participants exhibited in the current session. We found a strong relationship of early positive and negative potentials around 200 ms (elicited with the auditory oddball task) with performance. The amplitude of the P2 (r = −0.77) and of the N2 (r = −0.86) had the strongest correlations. Aptitude prediction using an auditory oddball was successful. The finding that the N2 amplitude is a stronger predictor of performance than P3 amplitude was reproduced after initially showing this effect with a healthy sample of BCI users. This will reduce strain on the end-users by minimizing the time needed to find suitable paradigms and inspire new approaches to improve performance. KW - amyothropic lateral sclerosis KW - electrode potentials KW - electroencephalography KW - event-related potentials KW - functional magnetic imaging KW - human performance KW - man-computer interface KW - topography Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-97268 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kaufmann, Tobias A1 - Holz, Elisa M. A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Comparison of tactile, auditory, and visual modality for brain-computer interface use: a case study with a patient in the locked-in state JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - This paper describes a case study with a patient in the classic locked-in state, who currently has no means of independent communication. Following a user-centered approach, we investigated event-related potentials (ERP) elicited in different modalities for use in brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. Such systems could provide her with an alternative communication channel. To investigate the most viable modality for achieving BCI based communication, classic oddball paradigms (1 rare and 1 frequent stimulus, ratio 1:5) in the visual, auditory and tactile modality were conducted (2 runs per modality). Classifiers were built on one run and tested offline on another run (and vice versa). In these paradigms, the tactile modality was clearly superior to other modalities, displaying high offline accuracy even when classification was performed on single trials only. Consequently, we tested the tactile paradigm online and the patient successfully selected targets without any error. Furthermore, we investigated use of the visual or tactile modality for different BCI systems with more than two selection options. In the visual modality, several BCI paradigms were tested offline. Neither matrix-based nor so-called gaze-independent paradigms constituted a means of control. These results may thus question the gaze-independence of current gaze-independent approaches to BCI. A tactile four-choice BCI resulted in high offline classification accuracies. Yet, online use raised various issues. Although performance was clearly above chance, practical daily life use appeared unlikely when compared to other communication approaches (e.g., partner scanning). Our results emphasize the need for user-centered design in BCI development including identification of the best stimulus modality for a particular user. Finally, the paper discusses feasibility of EEG-based BCI systems for patients in classic locked-in state and compares BCI to other AT solutions that we also tested during the study. KW - brain-computer interface KW - tactile auditory and visual modality KW - locked-in syndrome KW - user-centered design KW - end-user testing KW - assistive technology Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-97079 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Halder, Sebastian A1 - Hammer, Eva Maria A1 - Kleih, Sonja Claudia A1 - Bogdan, Martin A1 - Rosenstiel, Wolfgang A1 - Birbaumer, Nils A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - Prediction of Auditory and Visual P300 Brain-Computer Interface Aptitude N2 - Objective: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide a non-muscular communication channel for patients with late-stage motoneuron disease (e.g., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)) or otherwise motor impaired people and are also used for motor rehabilitation in chronic stroke. Differences in the ability to use a BCI vary from person to person and from session to session. A reliable predictor of aptitude would allow for the selection of suitable BCI paradigms. For this reason, we investigated whether P300 BCI aptitude could be predicted from a short experiment with a standard auditory oddball. Methods: Forty healthy participants performed an electroencephalography (EEG) based visual and auditory P300-BCI spelling task in a single session. In addition, prior to each session an auditory oddball was presented. Features extracted from the auditory oddball were analyzed with respect to predictive power for BCI aptitude. Results: Correlation between auditory oddball response and P300 BCI accuracy revealed a strong relationship between accuracy and N2 amplitude and the amplitude of a late ERP component between 400 and 600 ms. Interestingly, the P3 amplitude of the auditory oddball response was not correlated with accuracy. Conclusions: Event-related potentials recorded during a standard auditory oddball session moderately predict aptitude in an audiory and highly in a visual P300 BCI. The predictor will allow for faster paradigm selection. Significance: Our method will reduce strain on patients because unsuccessful training may be avoided, provided the results can be generalized to the patient population. KW - Psychologie Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-77992 ER -