Making use of the power of concentration

Opening doors, switching TV channels or writing messages simply by using thoughts is something we will probably have to wait for for another several years. However, an international team of researchers from the University of Hamburg and the Tsinghua University in Peking, China, have now made one stride towards its realization. In the current issue of the renowned “Journal of Neural Engineering” the scientists introduce a Brain-Computer Interface which is capable of “understanding” electrical signals generated in the brain. 

Researchers worldwide are working on such Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) in order to acquire information from brain signals and utilizing them for controlling computers or other devices. Among other things, researches on BCI-systems are targeted at enabling patients having lost their ability to move or communicate to take part in daily life. The underlying idea is that the patient pursues tasks mentally, for instance by imagining movements of the hand or observing images on a screen. At the same time, brain signals are continuously analyzed, classified and then applied for instance to opening an Email program, selecting words or letters, or for steering a wheel chair.

In the recently introduced system, the brain’s weak electrical signals are recorded on the head’s surface, while at the same time the patient observes dotted clouds of different colors overlapping each other on a computer screen. Simultaneously, a complex computer program analyzes the brain signals and understands which of the clouds the patient is focusing on or whether he is at rest. In an exemplified application, the patients can use the system to choose between the words “warm”, “cold”, “hunger” and “alarm”. Some of the healthy test persons were able to achive accuracies of 100%.

The system’s functional principle has been known for quite a while, says Dan Zhang of the Tsinghua University in Peking. “However, the previous systems were depending on the patient’s ability to shift his line of sight. By presenting the dotted clouds overlapping and by using a new method of identification on which dots the user is focusing on, this is not necessary any more.
Therefore, Alexander Maye of the medical faculty at the University of Hamburg adds, patients not capable of moving their eyes are still able to use the interface. The systems can also be deployed by healthy users, for instance in computer games or to contol toy robots. “In fact, within the next years a boom of those home applications might occur”, says Maye.

The German-Chinese team has been conducting research concerning innovative BCI-systems for two years already. The successful cooperation was facilitated by the Graduate Research Group for cross-modal interactions in natural and artificial cognitive systems (www.cinacs.org) promoted by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The department of informatics, the department of psychology and the faculty of medicine at the University of Hamburg are involved in this interdisciplinary research collaboration.

Find the Original Publication published in the “Journal of Neural Engineering” here:
http://stacks.iop.org/1741-2552/7/016010

Find video material concerning BCI here:
http://www.uke.de/institute/neurophysiologie/index_60498.php

If you have any questions, please contact:
Prof. Dr. Jianwei Zhang
Department Informatik
Sprecher des Graduiertenkollegs CINACS
Tel.: +49 40 42883-2431
E-Mail: zhang@informatik.uni-hamburg.de

Quelle: Universität Hamburg