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God, not another EEG-based BCI article (especially of Emotiv, whose core competency as a company is mostly being a hype machine). This stuff is trash from a ne

by frisco 16y ago

God, not another EEG-based BCI article (especially of Emotiv, whose core competency as a company is mostly being a hype machine). This stuff is trash from a neural interfacing perspective; your keyboard is much higher throughput and better fidelity, and as much a "brain interface" as this is (it translates brain activity into computer signals!). EEG mostly detects scalp, eye, and face muscle activity, and some very gross brain state (such as awake/alert and drowsy). Subjects can get ok performance in demos by confusing this muscle activity with "brain activity", but it's absolutly not a "neural interface".

Goladus 16y ago
A keyboard requires fingers or at least some sort of functional limb, however. This doesn't. It doesn't really have to be called a neural interface, if that offends you. For anyone else hung up on this, I recommend mentally substituting the term "scalp-eye interface" or "hands-free interface" and focusing on the possibilities instead of the limitations.
kermit_de_fro 16y ago
I won't argue with your feelings toward Emotiv, since I don't especially trust their demos to be well controlled for various muscular cues. That said, there is good work done which puts a lot of effort into actually measuring the non-muscular signal from EEGs and training on that instead. EEGs can capture signal from alpha waves (roughly analogous to alertness as you describe), and researchers have come up with numerous specific responses to watch for. One such example is the P3000 response, corresponding to the reaction a person has when they are shown an object which they were picturing in their head (a target). There are numerous other techniques, many dealing with predicting a type of pattern by looking for activity coming from the corresponding area of the brain. If the sensors and algorithms are written correctly, EEG can absolutely be a neural interface, although one with quite a lot of noise. Done poorly, it can be entirely swamped by the physical motions you describe.

by frisco 16y ago

Goladus 16y ago

A keyboard requires fingers or at least some sort of functional limb, however. This doesn't. It doesn't really have to be called a neural interface, if that offends you. For anyone else hung up on this, I recommend mentally substituting the term "scalp-eye interface" or "hands-free interface" and focusing on the possibilities instead of the limitations.

kermit_de_fro 16y ago

I won't argue with your feelings toward Emotiv, since I don't especially trust their demos to be well controlled for various muscular cues. That said, there is good work done which puts a lot of effort into actually measuring the non-muscular signal from EEGs and training on that instead. EEGs can capture signal from alpha waves (roughly analogous to alertness as you describe), and researchers have come up with numerous specific responses to watch for. One such example is the P3000 response, corresponding to the reaction a person has when they are shown an object which they were picturing in their head (a target). There are numerous other techniques, many dealing with predicting a type of pattern by looking for activity coming from the corresponding area of the brain. If the sensors and algorithms are written correctly, EEG can absolutely be a neural interface, although one with quite a lot of noise. Done poorly, it can be entirely swamped by the physical motions you describe.