Exploiting the temporal structure of EEG data for SSVEP detection

Abstract: Background Traditional spatial filters used for steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) extraction such as minimum energy combination (MEC) require the estimation of the background electroencephalogram (EEG) noise components. Even though this leads to improved performance in low signal to noise ratio (SNR) conditions, it makes such algorithms slow compared to the standard detection methods like canonical correlation analysis (CCA) due to the additional computational cost. New method In this paper, Periodic component analysis ( π CA) is presented as an alternative spatial filtering approach to extract the SSVEP component effectively without involving extensive modelling of the noise. The π CA can separate out components corresponding to a given frequency of interest from the background electroencephalogram (EEG) by capturing the temporal information and does not generalize SSVEP based on rigid templates. Results Data from ten test subjects were used to evaluate the proposed method and the results demonstrate that the periodic component analysis acts as a reliable spatial filter for SSVEP extraction. Statistical tests were performed to validate the results. Comparison with existing methods The experimental results show that π CA provides significant improvement in accuracy compared to standard CCA and MEC in low SNR conditions. Conclusions The results demonstrate that π CA provides better detection accuracy compared to CCA and on par with that of MEC at a lower computational cost. Hence π CA is a reliable and efficient alternative detection algorithm for SSVEP based brain–computer interface (BCI).

Abstract: Steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) is the brain’s response to quickly repetitive visual stimulus with a certain frequency. To increase the information transfer rate (ITR) in SSVEP-based systems, due to the frequency resolution restriction, we are forced to broaden the frequency range, which causes harmonic frequencies to come into the stimulation frequency range. Conventional canonical correlation analysis (CCA) may be associated with error for SSVEP frequency recognition at stimulation frequencies with harmonic relations. The number of harmonics considered to construct reference signals are determined adaptively; for frequencies whose second harmonic exists in the frequency range, two harmonics are used, and for other frequencies, just one harmonic is used. After constructing reference signals and recognizing the frequency corresponding to the maximum value of correlation by CCA, the target frequency is determined after a postprocessing step. Results show that for the 8-s time window length, the average classification accuracy for the adaptive CCA was 84%, while the corresponding values for the CCA with one harmonic (N = 1) and two harmonics (N = 2) were 78% and 74%, respectively. For 4-s length, this accuracy for the adaptive CCA was 86%, while it was 78% for both harmonic selection modes of the standard CCA, N = 1 and N = 2 . In SSVEP applications with harmonic stimulation frequencies, the adaptive CCA has significantly improved the frequency recognition accuracy in comparison with the popularly standard CCA method. The proposed method can be useful for SSVEP-based BCI systems that use broad ranges of stimulation frequencies with harmonic relation.

Abstract: Separation of sources consists of recovering a set of signals of which only instantaneous linear mixtures are observed. In many situations, no a priori information on the mixing matrix is available: The linear mixture should be "blindly" processed. This typically occurs in narrowband array processing applications when the array manifold is unknown or distorted. This paper introduces a new source separation technique exploiting the time coherence of the source signals. In contrast with other previously reported techniques, the proposed approach relies only on stationary second-order statistics that are based on a joint diagonalization of a set of covariance matrices. Asymptotic performance analysis of this method is carried out; some numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Abstract: The individual properties of visual objects, like form or color, are represented in different areas in our visual cortex. In order to perceive one coherent object, its features have to be bound together. This was found to be achieved in cat and monkey brains by temporal correlation of the firing rates of neurons which code the same object. This firing rate is predominantly observed in the gamma frequency range (approx. 30-80 Hz, mainly around 40 Hz). In addition, it has been shown in humans that stimuli which flicker at gamma frequencies are processed faster by our brains than when they flicker at different frequencies. These effects could be due to neural oscillators, which preferably oscillate at certain frequencies, so-called resonance frequencies. It is also known that neurons in visual cortex respond to flickering stimuli at the frequency of the flickering light. If neural oscillators exist with resonance frequencies, they should respond more strongly to stimulation with their resonance frequency. We performed an experiment, where ten human subjects were presented flickering light at frequencies from 1 to 100 Hz in 1-Hz steps. The event-related potentials exhibited steady-state oscillations at all frequencies up to at least 90 Hz. Interestingly, the steady-state potentials exhibited clear resonance phenomena around 10, 20, 40 and 80 Hz. This could be a potential neural basis for gamma oscillations in binding experiments. The pattern of results resembles that of multiunit activity and local field potentials in cat visual cortex.

Abstract: Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is applied to analyze the frequency components of steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) in electroencephalogram (EEG). The essence of this method is to extract a narrowband frequency component of SSVEP in EEG. A recognition approach is proposed based on the extracted frequency features for an SSVEP-based brain computer interface (BCI). Recognition Results of the approach were higher than those using a widely used fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based spectrum estimation method

Abstract: This paper presents a brain-computer interface (BCI) that can help users to input phone numbers. The system is based on the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP). Twelve buttons illuminated at different rates were displayed on a computer monitor. The buttons constituted a virtual telephone keypad, representing the ten digits 0-9, BACKSPACE, and ENTER. Users could input phone number by gazing at these buttons. The frequency-coded SSVEP was used to judge which button the user desired. Eight of the thirteen subjects succeeded in ringing the mobile phone using the system. The average transfer rate over all subjects was 27.15 bits/min. The attractive features of the system are noninvasive signal recording, little training required for use, and high information transfer rate. Approaches to improve the performance of the system are discussed.

Abstract: Blind identification of source signals is studied from both theoretical and algorithmic aspects. A mathematical structure is formulated from which the acceptable indeterminacy is represented by an equivalence relation. The concept of identifiability is then defined. Two identifiable cases are shown along with blind identification algorithms. The performance of FOBI (fourth-order blind identification), EFOBI (extended FOBI), and AMUSE algorithms is evaluated by some heuristic arguments and simulation results. It is shown that EFOBI outperforms the FOBI algorithm, and the AMUSE algorithm performs better than EFOBI in the case of nonwhite source signals. AMUSE is applied to a speech extraction problem and shown to have promising results. >