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Ninety-nine healthy people participated in a brain-computer interface (BCI) field study conducted at an exposition held in Graz, Austria. Each subject spent 20-30 min on a two-session BCI investigation. The first session consisted of 40 trials conducted without feedback. Then, a subject-specific classifier was set up to provide the subject with feedback, and the second session--40 trials in which the subject had to control a horizontal bar on a computer screen--was conducted. Subjects were instructed to imagine a right-hand movement or a foot movement after a cue stimulus depending on the direction of an arrow. Bipolar electrodes were mounted over the right-hand representation area and over the foot representation area. Classification results achieved with 1) an adaptive autoregressive model (39 subjects) and 2) band power estimation (60 subjects) are presented. Roughly 93% of the subjects were able to achieve classification accuracy above 60% after two sessions of training.

Most brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) rely on one of three types of signals in the electroencephalogram (EEG): P300s, steady-state visually evoked potentials, and event-related desynchronization. EEG is typically recorded non-invasively with electrodes mounted on the human scalp using conductive electrode gel for optimal impedance and data quality. The use of electrode gel entails serious problems that are especially pronounced in real-world settings when experts are not available. Some recent work has introduced dry electrode systems that do not require gel, but often introduce new problems such as comfort and signal quality. The principal goal of this study was to assess a new dry electrode BCI system in a very common task: spelling with a P300 BCI. A total of 23 subjects used a P300 BCI to spell the word “LUCAS” while receiving real-time, closed-loop feedback. The dry system yielded classification accuracies that were similar to those obtained with gel systems. All subjects completed a questionnaire after data recording, and all subjects stated that the dry system was not uncomfortable. This is the first field validation of a dry electrode P300 BCI system, and paves the way for new research and development with EEG recording systems that are much more practical and convenient in field settings than conventional systems.

An experiment was conducted in a Cave-like environment to explore the relationship between physiological responses and each of breaks in presence, and utterances by virtual characters towards the participants. Twenty people explored a virtual environment (VE) that depicted a virtual bar scenario. The experiment was divided into a training and an experimental phase.During the experimental phase breaks in presence (BIPs) in form of whiteouts of the VE scenario were induced for 2 seconds at four equally spaced times during the approximate 5 minutes in the bar scenario. Additionally 5 virtual characters addressed remarks at the subjects. Physiological measures including ECG and GSR were recorded throughout the whole experiment. The heart rate, the heart rate variability and the event-related heart rate changes were calculated from the acquired ECG data. The frequency response of the GSR signal was calculated with a wavelet analysis. The study shows that the heart rate and heart rate variability parameters vary significantly between the training and experimental phase.GSR parameters and event-related heart rate changes show the occurrence of breaks in presence. Event-related heart rate changes also signified the virtual character utterances.There were also differences in response observed between more and less social phobic participants.

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Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are communication systems that allow people to send messages or commands without movement. BCIs rely on different types of signals in the electroencephalogram (EEG), typically P300s, steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEP), or event-related desynchronization. Early BCI systems were often evaluated with a selected group of subjects. Also, many articles do not mention data from subjects who performed poorly. These and other factors have made it difficult to estimate how many people could use different BCIs. The present study explored how many subjects could use an SSVEP BCI. We recorded data from 53 subjects while they participated in 1–4 runs that were each 4 min long. During these runs, the subjects focused on one of four LEDs that each flickered at a different frequency. The eight channel EEG data were analyzed with a minimum energy parameter estimation algorithm and classified with linear discriminant analysis into one of the four classes. Online results showed that SSVEP BCIs could provide effective communication for all 53 subjects, resulting in a grand average accuracy of 95.5%. About 96.2% of the subjects reached an accuracy above 80%, and nobody was below 60%. This study showed that SSVEP based BCI systems can reach very high accuracies after only a very short training period. The SSVEP approach worked for all participating subjects, who attained accuracy well above chance level. This is important because it shows that SSVEP BCIs could provide communication for some users when other approaches might not work for them.

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