title: A P300-based brain-computer interface aimed at operating electronic devices at home for severely disabled people.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering Group, E.T.S.I. de Telecomunicación, Universidad de Valladolid, Paseo Belén 15, 47011, Valladolid, Spain, rebeca.corralejo@gib.tel.uva.es.
authors.forename: Rebeca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Corralejo
authors.forename: Luis F
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Nicolás-Alonso
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Alvarez
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hornero
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D062207:Brain-Computer Interfaces; D006233:Persons with Disabilities; D004581:Electronics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300 / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires