Simultaneous EEG Acquisition System for Multiple Users: Development and Related Issues

Abstract

Social interaction is one of humans’ most important activities and many efforts have been made to understand the phenomenon. Recently, some investigators have attempted to apply advanced brain signal acquisition systems that allow dynamic brain activities to be measured simultaneously during social interactions. Most studies to date have investigated dyadic interactions, although multilateral interactions are more common in reality. However, it is believed that most studies have focused on such interactions because of methodological limitations, in that it is very difficult to design a well-controlled experiment for multiple users at a reasonable cost. Accordingly, there are few simultaneous acquisition systems for multiple users. In this study, we propose a design framework for an acquisition system that measures EEG data simultaneously in an environment with 10 or more people. Our proposed framework allowed us to acquire EEG data at up to 1 kHz frequency from up to 20 people simultaneously. Details of our acquisition system are described from hardware and software perspectives. In addition, various related issues that arose in the system’s development—such as synchronization techniques, system loads, electrodes, and applications—are discussed. In addition, simultaneous visual ERP experiments were conducted with a group of nine people to validate the EEG acquisition framework proposed. We found that our framework worked reasonably well with respect to less than 4 ms delay and average loss rates of 1%. It is expected that this system can be used in various hyperscanning studies, such as those on crowd psychology, large-scale human interactions, and collaborative brain–computer interface, among others.

Joint recording of EEG and audio signals in hyperscanning and pseudo-hyperscanning experiments

“…To address this issue, some effort has been made in describing EEG hyperscanning configurations with sufficient detail to be easily reproduced by others [2 , 10] . With increased use, methodologies related to hyperscanning recordings are improving their best practice standards [1] .…”

EEG based brain-computer interface control applications: A comprehensive review

“…A graphic is cited from the work cited in Figure 2 [5]. Electroencephalography is the process of measuring and recording the postsynaptic potentials resulting from ionic activities between neurons via electrodes over the scalp [5,6]. EEG is a type of biopotential amplifier that transfers the signal received through the electrodes to the system output by subjecting it to amplification and filtering [7].…”

MuseStudio: Brain Activity Data Management Library for Low-Cost EEG Devices

“…As an alternative, there is a hardware-based framework [31] that measures EEG data obtained from 10 or more people using the Muse headband and allows acquiring EEG data at up to a 1 kHz frequency from up to 20 people simultaneously. However, in this hardware proposal, EEG data management cannot be provided, and it is only a graphical visualization tool.…”