title: An Auditory-Tactile Visual Saccade-Independent P300 Brain-Computer Interface.
abstract: Most P300 event-related potential (ERP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) studies focus on gaze shift-dependent BCIs, which cannot be used by people who have lost voluntary eye movement. However, the performance of visual saccade-independent P300 BCIs is generally poor. To improve saccade-independent BCI performance, we propose a bimodal P300 BCI approach that simultaneously employs auditory and tactile stimuli. The proposed P300 BCI is a vision-independent system because no visual interaction is required of the user. Specifically, we designed a direction-congruent bimodal paradigm by randomly and simultaneously presenting auditory and tactile stimuli from the same direction. Furthermore, the channels and number of trials were tailored to each user to improve online performance. With 12 participants, the average online information transfer rate (ITR) of the bimodal approach improved by 45.43% and 51.05% over that attained, respectively, with the auditory and tactile approaches individually. Importantly, the average online ITR of the bimodal approach, including the break time between selections, reached 10.77 bits/min. These findings suggest that the proposed bimodal system holds promise as a practical visual saccade-independent P300 BCI.
authors.affiliation: 1 College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, P. R. China.|2 National Key Laboratory of Human Factors Engineering, China Astronaut Research and Training Center, Beijing 100094, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Erwei
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.affiliation: 3 Bloorview Research Institute, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada M4G1R8, Canada.
authors.forename: Timothy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Zeyl
authors.affiliation: 4 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada L8S 4L8, Canada.
authors.forename: Rami
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Saab
authors.affiliation: 1 College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Dewen
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: 1 College of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Zongtan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: 3 Bloorview Research Institute, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada M4G1R8, Canada.
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chau
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000328:Adult; D062207:Brain-Computer Interfaces; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010812:Physical Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D012438:Saccades; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Brain–computer interface; P300 event-related potentials; auditory; bimodal stimuli; tactile