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A brain–computer interface for motor assist by the prefrontal cortex
Author(s) -
Misawa Tadanobu,
Takano Shinya,
Shimokawa Tetsuya,
Hirobayashi Shigeki
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
electronics and communications in japan
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.131
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1942-9541
pISSN - 1942-9533
DOI - 10.1002/ecj.11426
Subject(s) - brain–computer interface , prefrontal cortex , interface (matter) , computer science , motor cortex , brain activity and meditation , support vector machine , motor system , neuroscience , psychology , speech recognition , electroencephalography , artificial intelligence , cognition , bubble , maximum bubble pressure method , stimulation , parallel computing
Considerable research has been conducted on the development of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). Although there have been several reports on BCIs that assist motor functions by measurement of brain activity in the motor cortex, only a few studies have discussed BCIs that assist motor functions by measurement of activity in areas other than the motor cortex. In this study, we experimentally develop a BCI that assists motor functions on the basis of brain activity in the prefrontal cortex. In this BCI system, subjects are presented with the labyrinth problem. Concretely, brain activity is measured using fNIRS and the data are acquired in real time. The signal processing module implements low‐pass filtering of these signals. Further, the pattern classification module used in this system currently is a support vector machine. Twenty‐two subjects, both male and female, volunteered to participate in this experiment. Eight of these twenty‐two subjects were able to solve the labyrinth problem. In this experiment, we could not obtain a high distinction. However, these results show that it is possible to develop BCI systems that assist motor functions using information from the prefrontal cortex. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 95(10): 1–8, 2012; Published online in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com ). DOI 10.1002/ecj.11426