title: Training and testing ERP-BCIs under different mental workload conditions.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  As one of the most popular and extensively studied paradigms of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), event-related potential-based BCIs (ERP-BCIs) are usually built and tested in ideal laboratory settings in most existing studies, with subjects concentrating on stimuli and intentionally avoiding possible distractors. This study is aimed at examining the effect of simultaneous mental activities on ERP-BCIs by manipulating various levels of mental workload during the training and/or testing of an ERP-BCI.
  
  
  METHODS
  Mental workload was manipulated during the training or testing of a row-column P300-speller to investigate how and to what extent the spelling performance and the ERPs evoked by the oddball stimuli are affected by simultaneous mental workload.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Responses of certain ERP components, temporal-occipital N200 and the late reorienting negativity evoked by the oddball stimuli and the classifiability of ERP features between targets and non-targets decreased with the increase of mental workload encountered by the subject. However, the effect of mental workload on the performance of ERP-BCI was not always negative but depended on the conditions where the ERP-BCI was built and applied. The performance of ERP-BCI built under an ideal lab setting without any irrelevant mental activities declined with the increasing mental workload of the testing data. However, the performance was significantly improved when an ERP-BCI was built under an appropriate mental workload level, compared to that built under speller-only conditions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The adverse effect of concurrent mental activities may present a challenge for ERP-BCIs trained in ideal lab settings but which are to be used in daily work, especially when users are performing demanding mental processing. On the other hand, the positive effects of the mental workload of the training data suggest that introducing appropriate mental workload during training ERP-BCIs is of potential benefit to the performance in practical applications.
authors.forename: Yufeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ke
authors.forename: Peiyuan
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Yuqian
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.forename: Hongzhi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Dong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ming
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D062207:Brain-Computer Interfaces; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003143:Communication Devices for People with Disabilities; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300 / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D000069550:Machine Learning; D008297:Male; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D015443:Word Processing / Q000379:methods; D016526:Workload; D055815:Young Adult