A P300-based brain–computer interface aimed at operating electronic devices at home for severely disabled people

• Published in: Medical & biological engineering & computing Vol. 52; no. 10; pp. 861 - 872
• Main Authors: Corralejo, Rebeca, Nicolás-Alonso, Luis F., Álvarez, Daniel, Hornero, Roberto
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.10.2014; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering; Biomedicine; Brain; Brain-Computer Interfaces; Cerebral palsy; Cognitive ability; Communication; Computer Applications; Design of experiments; Disability; Disabled Persons; Discriminant analysis; Electroencephalography; Electronics - instrumentation; Event-Related Potentials, P300 - physiology; Female; Human Physiology; Humans; Imaging; Interfaces; Male; Middle Aged; Neuromuscular diseases; Original Article; People with disabilities; Radiology; Signal processing; Spasticity; Spinal cord; Studies; Surveys and Questionnaires; Traumatic brain injury; User interface; Brain; People with disabilities; Electroencephalography; Communication aids for disabled; computer interfaces; P300 event-related potentials
• DOI: 10.1007/s11517-014-1191-5
• ISSN: 0140-0118; 1741-0444

The present study aims at developing and assessing an assistive tool for operating electronic devices at home by means of a P300-based brain–computer interface (BCI). Fifteen severely impaired subjects participated in the study. The developed tool allows users to interact with their usual environment fulfilling their main needs. It allows for navigation through ten menus and to manage up to 113 control commands from eight electronic devices. Ten out of the fifteen subjects were able to operate the proposed tool with accuracy above 77 %. Eight out of them reached accuracies higher than 95 %. Moreover, bitrates up to 20.1 bit/min were achieved. The novelty of this study lies in the use of an environment control application in a real scenario: real devices managed by potential BCI end-users. Although impaired users might not be able to set up this system without aid of others, this study takes a significant step to evaluate the degree to which such populations could eventually operate a stand-alone system. Our results suggest that neither the type nor the degree of disability is a relevant issue to suitably operate a P300-based BCI. Hence, it could be useful to assist disabled people at home improving their personal autonomy.