title: Control of an electrical prosthesis with an SSVEP-based BCI.
abstract: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are systems that establish a direct connection between the human brain and a computer, thus providing an additional communication channel. They are used in a broad field of applications nowadays. One important issue is the control of neuroprosthetic devices for the restoration of the grasp function in spinal-cord-injured people. In this communication, an asynchronous (self-paced) four-class BCI based on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) was used to control a two-axes electrical hand prosthesis. During training, four healthy participants reached an online classification accuracy between 44% and 88%. Controlling the prosthetic hand asynchronously, the participants reached a performance of 75.5 to 217.5 s to copy a series of movements, whereas the fastest possible duration determined by the setup was 64 s. The number of false negative (FN) decisions varied from 0 to 10 (the maximal possible decisions were 34). It can be stated that the SSVEP-based BCI, operating in an asynchronous mode, is feasible for the control of neuroprosthetic devices with the flickering lights mounted on its surface.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Brain-Computer Interfaces, Institute for Knowledge Discovery, Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz, Austria. gernot.mueller@ieee.org
authors.forename: Gernot R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Müller-Putz
authors.forename: Gert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pfurtscheller
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D004581:Electronics / Q000295:instrumentation; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D019054:Evoked Potentials, Motor / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology*; D018737:Hand Strength / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods; D011474:Prosthesis Design; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013813:Therapy, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D014584:User-Computer Interface