Effects of Background Music on Objective and Subjective Performance Measures in an Auditory BCI

Abstract

Several studies have explored brain computer interface (BCI) systems based on auditory stimuli, which could help patients with visual impairments. Usability and user satisfaction are important considerations in any BCI. Although background music can influence emotion and performance in other task environments, and many users may wish to listen to music while using a BCI, auditory, and other BCIs are typically studied without background music. Some work has explored the possibility of using polyphonic music in auditory BCI systems. However, this approach requires users with good musical skills, and has not been explored in online experiments. Our hypothesis was that an auditory BCI with background music would be preferred by subjects over a similar BCI without background music, without any difference in BCI performance. We introduce a simple paradigm (which does not require musical skill) using percussion instrument sound stimuli and background music, and evaluated it in both offline and online experiments. The result showed that subjects preferred the auditory BCI with background music. Different performance measures did not reveal any significant performance effect when comparing background music vs. no background. Since the addition of background music does not impair BCI performance but is preferred by users, auditory (and perhaps other) BCIs should consider including it. Our study also indicates that auditory BCIs can be effective even if the auditory channel is simultaneously otherwise engaged.

Introducing Rhythmic Sinusoidal Amplitude-Modulated Auditory Stimuli with Multiple Message Frequency Coding for Fatigue Reduction in Normal Subjects: An EEG Study

“…Although both stimuli sets resulted in sufficient classification performances, rhythmic set led to insignificant lower classification accuracy and Cohen's kappa value than its simple counterpart. This result, at first glance, seems to be opposite to the findings in the literature that interesting stimuli provide higher response classification accuracy (Höhne et al, 2012;Treder et al, 2014;Zhou et al, 2016;Heo et al, 2017). We measured the subjects' fatigue rather than their acceptance rate or feeling about the stimuli.…”

“…Moreover, daily usage of tactile BCI is hard because most people do not have tactile stimulators at home (Kaufmann et al, 2013). Thus, there has been an increasing interest towards auditory BCI (aBCI), which mainly uses auditory selective attention (Hill et al, 2004;Kanoh et al, 2008;Nijboer et al, 2008;Furdea et al, 2009;Klobassa et al, 2009;Halder et al, 2010;Schreuder et al, 2010;Higashi et al, 2011;Höhne et al, 2011;Kim et al, 2011;Schreuder et al, 2011;Höhne et al, 2012;Kim et al, 2012;Lopez-Gordo et al, 2012b;Lopez-Gordo et al, 2012a;Käthner et al, 2013;Nakamura et al, 2013;Simon et al, 2014;Kleih et al, 2015;Halder et al, 2016;Zhou et al, 2016;Heo et al, 2017;Kaongoen and Jo, 2017;Jalilpour and Sardouie, 2018;Ogino et al, 2019) or auditory imagery (González et al, 2019) to influence event-related potentials (ERPs) and/or auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs). ASSR is chiefly evoked by listening to amplitude-modulated (AM) tones, and its spectrum has peaks at message frequency (fm) (Picton et al, 2003;Lopez et al, 2009;Tanaka et al, 2013;Tanaka et al, 2015).…”

“…In aBCI, lengthening the processing window enhances the classification accuracy, whereas it reduces the speed (Lopez-Gordo et al, 2012a). Also, when users eagerly listen to their interesting stimuli, the classification accuracy (Höhne et al, 2012;Treder et al, 2014;Zhou et al, 2016;Heo et al, 2017) and response amplitude (Kleih et al, 2010) rise. Moreover, rhythmic stimulation modulates the intrinsic neural oscillatory characteristics (Treder et al, 2014;Herrmann et al, 2016) and facilitates keeping focus (Sato et al, 2019).…”

Toward a reliable PWM‐based light‐emitting diode visual stimulus for improved SSVEP response with minimal visual fatigue

“…SSVEP uses nonmuscular communication channel and that makes it widely acceptable in brain-computer interface (BCI) applications, where it can support people with disabilities to control external application with multiple visual stimuli [10][11][12][13]. Other form of BCIs includes hybrid versions, which combines paradigms such as P300, visual or audio to improve the accuracy and efficiency in BCI operations [14][15][16]. Fig.…”

Eyes-Closed Increases the Usability of Brain-Computer Interfaces Based on Auditory Event-Related Potentials

“…In the last decade, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) relying on auditory stimuli experienced a burst of activity (Nijboer et al, 2008 ; Furdea et al, 2009 ; Klobassa et al, 2009 ; Halder et al, 2010 , 2016 ; Schreuder et al, 2010 , 2011 ; Höhne et al, 2011 , 2012 ; Lopez-Gordo et al, 2012 ; Käthner et al, 2013 ; Nambu et al, 2013 ; Pokorny et al, 2013 ; De Vos et al, 2014 ; Kindermans et al, 2014 ; Tangermann et al, 2014 , 2018 ; Simon et al, 2015 ; Baykara et al, 2016 ; Real et al, 2016 ; Xiao et al, 2016 ; Zhou et al, 2016 ; Hübner and Tangermann, 2017 ). In these BCIs, the subject hears different tones or natural sounds (e.g., animal sounds, syllables or words) while the subjects brain signals are recorded, e.g., with electroencephalography (EEG).…”