The traditional paradigm of motor-imagery-based brain-computer interface (BCI) is abstract, which cannot effectively guide users to modulate brain activity, thus limiting the activation degree of the sensorimotor cortex. It was found that the motor imagery task of Chinese characters writing was better accepted by users and helped guide them to modulate their sensorimotor rhythms. However, different Chinese characters have different writing complexity (number of strokes), and the effect of motor imagery tasks of Chinese characters with different writing complexity on the performance of motor-imagery-based BCI is still unclear. In this paper, a total of 12 healthy subjects were recruited for studying the effects of motor imagery tasks of Chinese characters with two different writing complexity (5 and 10 strokes) on the performance of motor-imagery-based BCI. The experimental results showed that, compared with Chinese characters with 5 strokes, motor imagery task of Chinese characters writing with 10 strokes obtained stronger sensorimotor rhythm and better recognition performance (P < 0.05). This study indicated that, appropriately increasing the complexity of the motor imagery task of Chinese characters writing can obtain stronger motor imagery potential and improve the recognition accuracy of motor-imagery-based BCI, which provides a reference for the design of the motor-imagery-based BCI paradigm in the future.
The research on brain functional mechanism and cognitive status based on brain network has the vital significance. According to a time–frequency method, partial directed coherence (PDC), for measuring directional interactions over time and frequency from scalp-recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, this paper proposed dynamic PDC (dPDC) method to model the brain network for motor imagery. The parameters attributes (out-degree, in-degree, clustering coefficient and eccentricity) of effective network for 9 subjects were calculated based on dataset from BCI competitions IV in 2008, and then the interaction between different locations for the network character and significance of motor imagery was analyzed. The clustering coefficients for both groups were higher than those of the random network and the path length was close to that of random network. These experimental results show that the effective network has a small world property. The analysis of the network parameter attributes for the left and right hands verified that there was a significant difference on ROI2 (P = 0.007) and ROI3 (P = 0.002) regions for out-degree. The information flows of effective network based dPDC algorithm among different brain regions illustrated the active regions for motor imagery mainly located in fronto-central regions (ROI2 and ROI3) and parieto-occipital regions (ROI5 and ROI6). Therefore, the effective network based dPDC algorithm can be effective to reflect the change of imagery motor, and can be used as a practical index to research neural mechanisms.
Mental rotation cognitive tasks based on motor imagery (MI) have excellent predictability for individual’s motor imagery ability. In order to explore the relationship between motor imagery and behavioral data, in this study, we asked 10 right-handed male subjects to participate in the experiments of mental rotation tasks based on corresponding body parts pictures, and we therefore obtained the behavioral effects according to their reaction time (RT) and accuracy (ACC). Later on, we performed Pearson correlation analysis between the behavioral data and the scores of the Movement Imagery Questionnaire-Revised(MIQ-R). For each subject, the results showed significant angular and body location effect in the process of mental rotation. For all subjects, the results showed that there were correlations between the behavioral data and the scores of MIQ-R. Subjects who needed the longer reaction time represented lower motor imagery abilities in the same test, and vice versa. This research laid the foundation for the further study on brain electrophysiology in the process of mental rotation based on MI.
Neurological damage caused by stroke is one of the main causes of motor dysfunction in patients, which brings great spiritual and economic burdens for society and families. Motor imagery is an important assisting method for the rehabilitation of patients after stroke, which is easy to learn with low cost and has great significance in improving the motor function and the quality of patient's life. This paper mainly summarizes the positive effects of motor imagery on post-stroke rehabilitation, outlines the physiological performance and theoretical model of motor imagery, the influencing factors of motor imagery, the scoring criteria of motor imagery and analyzes the shortcomings such as the few kinds of experimental subject, the subjective evaluation method and the low resolution of the experimental equipment in the process of rehabilitation of motor function in post-stroke patients. It is hopeful that patients with stroke will be more scientifically and effectively using motor imagery therapy.
One of the key problems of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) is low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. It affects recognition performance. To remove the artifact and noise, block under-determined blind source separation method based on the small number of channels is proposed in this paper. The non-stationary EEG signals are turned into block stationary signals by piecewise. The mixing matrix is estimated by the second-order under-determined blind mixing matrix identification. Then, the beamformer based on minimum mean square error separates the original sources of signals. Eventually, the reconstructed EEG for mixed signals removes the unwanted components of source signals to achieve suppressing artifact. The experiment results on the real motor imagery BCI indicated that the block under-determined blind source separation method could reconstruct signals and remove artifact effectively. The accuracy of motor imagery task of BCI has been greatly improved.
Brain-computer interface (BCI) based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a new-type human-computer interaction technique. To explore the separability of fNIRS signals in different motor imageries on the single limb, the study measured the fNIRS signals of 15 subjects (amateur football fans) during three different motor imageries of the right foot (passing, stopping and shooting). And the correlation coefficient of the HbO signal during different motor imageries was extracted as features for the input of a three-classification model based on support vector machines. The results found that the classification accuracy of the three motor imageries of the right foot was 78.89%±6.161%. The classification accuracy of the two-classification of motor imageries of the right foot, that is, passing and stopping, passing and shooting, and stopping and shooting was 85.17%±4.768%, 82.33%±6.011%, and 89.33%±6.713%, respectively. The results demonstrate that the fNIRS of different motor imageries of the single limb is separable, which is expected to add new control commands to fNIRS-BCI and also provide a new option for rehabilitation training and control peripherals for unilateral stroke patients. Besides, the study also confirms that the correlation coefficient can be used as an effective feature to classify different motor imageries.
In the research of non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI), independent component analysis (ICA) has been considered as a promising method of electroencephalogram (EEG) preprocessing and feature enhancement. However, there have been few investigations and implements about online ICA-BCI system up till now. This paper reports the investigation of the ICA-based motor imagery BCI (MIBCI) system, combining the characteristics of unsupervised learning of ICA and event-related desynchronization (ERD) related to motor imagery. We constructed a simple and practical method of ICA spatial filter calculation and discriminate criterion of three-type motor imageries in the study. To validate the online performance of proposed algorithms, an ICA-MIBCI experimental system was fully established based on NeuroScan EEG amplifier and VC++ platform. Four subjects participated in the experiment of MIBCI testing and two of them took part in the online experiment. The average classification accuracies of the three-type motor imageries reached 89.78% and 89.89% in the offline and online testing, respectively. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm produced high classification accuracy and required less time consumption, which would have a prospect of cross platform application.
Event-related desynchronization (ERD) is the basic feature of electroencephalogram (EEG), and the brain-computer interface based on motor imagery (MI-BCI) with the foundation of the analysis of ERD is of great significance in motor function recovery. The valid ERD characteristics extracted from EEG are the key to the performance of the BCI, so the study of which kind of stimulation mode can prompt subjects to generate more obvious characteristics of ERD is crucial. Four different stimulation modes are designed in this paper, and the effects of motion imagery tasks under static text stimulation, grip video stimulation, serial motion video stimulation of fingers as well as serial motion video stimulation of fingers with sound on the characteristics of ERD are analyzed. Combining the analysis of time-frequency spectrum, the power spectral density curve, ERD value and brain topographic map, it is shown that the ERD under serial motion video stimulation of fingers and serial motion video stimulation of fingers with sound modes is much stronger and has wider range of activation, and the BCI based on the analysis of ERD will have a better effect on practical application. As a result, the recognition and acceptance of the users of BCI system are improved in some extent.
Motor imaging therapy is of great significance to the rehabilitation of patients with stroke or motor dysfunction, but there are few studies on lower limb motor imagination. When electrical stimulation is applied to the posterior tibial nerve of the ankle, the steady-state somatosensory evoked potentials (SSSEP) can be induced at the electrical stimulation frequency. In order to better realize the classification of lower extremity motor imagination, improve the classification effect, and enrich the instruction set of lower extremity motor imagination, this paper designs two experimental paradigms: Motor imaging (MI) paradigm and Hybrid paradigm. The Hybrid paradigm contains electrical stimulation assistance. Ten healthy college students were recruited to complete the unilateral movement imagination task of left and right foot in two paradigms. Through time-frequency analysis and classification accuracy analysis, it is found that compared with MI paradigm, Hybrid paradigm could get obvious SSSEP and ERD features. The average classification accuracy of subjects in the Hybrid paradigm was 78.61%, which was obviously higher than the MI paradigm. It proves that electrical stimulation has a positive role in promoting the classification training of lower limb motor imagination.
Motor imagery (MI) is an important paradigm of driving brain computer interface (BCI). However, MI is not easy to control or acquire, and the performance of MI-BCI depends heavily on the performance of the subjects’ MI. Therefore, the correct execution of MI mental activities, ability evaluation and improvement methods play important and even critical roles in the improvement and application of MI-BCI system’s performance. However, in the research and development of MI-BCI, the existing researches mainly focus on the decoding algorithm of MI, but do not pay enough attention to the above three aspects of MI mental activities. In this paper, these problems of MI-BCI are discussed in detail, and it is pointed out that the subjects tend to use visual motor imagery as kinesthetic motor imagery. In the future, we need to develop some objective, quantitatively visualized MI ability evaluation methods, and develop some effective and less time-consumption training methods to improve MI ability. It is also necessary to solve the differences and commonness of MI problems between and within individuals and MI-BCI illiteracy to a certain extent.