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Single tap identification for fast BCI control

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Abstract

One of the major aims of BCI research is devoted to achieving faster and more efficient control of external devices. The identification of individual tap events in a motor imagery BCI is therefore a desirable goal. EEG is recorded from subjects performing and imagining finger taps with their left and right hands. A Differential Evolution based feature selection wrapper is used in order to identify optimal features in the spatial and frequency domains for tap identification. Channel-frequency band combinations are found which allow differentiation of tap vs. no-tap control conditions for executed and imagined taps. Left vs. right hand taps may also be differentiated with features found in this manner. A sliding time window is then used to accurately identify individual taps in the executed tap and imagined tap conditions. Highly statistically significant classification accuracies are achieved with time windows of 0.5 s and more allowing taps to be identified on a single trial basis.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their many helpful comments which were instrumental in improving the quality of this work. They would also like to extend their thanks to the numerous friends and colleagues who freely gave their time to volunteer as subjects in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Ian Daly, Slawomir J. Nasuto & Kevin Warwick

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  1. Ian Daly
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  2. Slawomir J. Nasuto
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  3. Kevin Warwick
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Correspondence to Ian Daly.

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Daly, I., Nasuto, S.J. & Warwick, K. Single tap identification for fast BCI control. Cogn Neurodyn 5, 21–30 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-010-9133-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-010-9133-x

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