title: Local and Remote Cooperation With Virtual and Robotic Agents: A P300 BCI Study in Healthy and People Living With Spinal Cord Injury.
abstract: The development of technological applications that allow people to control and embody external devices within social interaction settings represents a major goal for current and future brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. Prior research has suggested that embodied systems may ameliorate BCI end-user's experience and accuracy in controlling external devices. Along these lines, we developed an immersive P300-based BCI application with a head-mounted display for virtual-local and robotic-remote social interactions and explored in a group of healthy participants the role of proprioceptive feedback in the control of a virtual surrogate (Study 1). Moreover, we compared the performance of a small group of people with spinal cord injury (SCI) to a control group of healthy subjects during virtual and robotic social interactions (Study 2), where both groups received a proprioceptive stimulation. Our attempt to combine immersive environments, BCI technologies and neuroscience of body ownership suggests that providing realistic multisensory feedback still represents a challenge. Results have shown that healthy and people living with SCI used the BCI within the immersive scenarios with good levels of performance (as indexed by task accuracy, optimizations calls and Information Transfer Rate) and perceived control of the surrogates. Proprioceptive feedback did not contribute to alter performance measures and body ownership sensations. Further studies are necessary to test whether sensorimotor experience represents an opportunity to improve the use of future embodied BCI applications.
authors.forename: Emmanuele
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tidoni
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Abu-Alqumsan
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Leonardis
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kapeller
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Fusco
authors.forename: Cristoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Guger
authors.forename: Cristoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hintermuller
authors.forename: Angelika
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Peer
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Frisoli
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Tecchia
authors.forename: Massimo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bergamasco
authors.forename: Salvatore Maria
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Aglioti
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D062207:Brain-Computer Interfaces; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D008328:Man-Machine Systems; D009068:Movement; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013119:Spinal Cord Injuries / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult