title: A novel BCI based on ERP components sensitive to configural processing of human faces.
abstract: This study introduces a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) based on an oddball paradigm using stimuli of facial images with loss of configural face information (e.g., inversion of face). To the best of our knowledge, till now the configural processing of human faces has not been applied to BCI but widely studied in cognitive neuroscience research. Our experiments confirm that the face-sensitive event-related potential (ERP) components N170 and vertex positive potential (VPP) have reflected early structural encoding of faces and can be modulated by the configural processing of faces. With the proposed novel paradigm, we investigate the effects of ERP components N170, VPP and P300 on target detection for BCI. An eight-class BCI platform is developed to analyze ERPs and evaluate the target detection performance using linear discriminant analysis without complicated feature extraction processing. The online classification accuracy of 88.7% and information transfer rate of 38.7 bits min(-1) using stimuli of inverted faces with only single trial suggest that the proposed paradigm based on the configural processing of faces is very promising for visual stimuli-driven BCI applications.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Advanced Control and Optimization for Chemical Processes, Ministry of Education, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Qibin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: Xingyu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Andrzej
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cichocki
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D004569:Electroencephalography; D001330:Electronic Data Processing; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300 / Q000502:physiology; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009862:Online Systems; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult