Electroencephalograph feature extraction of somatosensory event related potential (ERP)

Abstract

Background: The event related potential (ERP) is an important electrophysiological response to an internal or external stimulus on human body. In some studies, the ERP-based brain computer interface (BCI) systems were created in visual or auditory modality.

However, in these type of BCIs, either the eyes or ears of the users are occupied when they are making a choice. It is not convenient to communicate with others. Thus, a somatosensory ERP based BCI can be developed to overcome this issue. According to this, the analysis of somatosensory ERP features is necessary to evaluate if somatosensory ERP is eligible for BCIs as an input.

Objective: 1. To study ERP features and design of P300 experiment. 2. To compare three types of P300 features elicited by three modalities. 3. To produce ERP response by electrical stimuli delivered to different position, and analyze ERP features.

Methods: Two experiments were conducted. In experiment 1, three modalities, including visual, auditory and electrical modality, were used to produce P300 response. Experiment 2 only presented electrical stimuli. In experiment 1 two electrical stimuli were presented with different intensities at one location, whereas four electrical stimuli were showed at different location with the same intensity. The amplitude and latency were compared among three modalities, and the ERP topography of experiment 2 was also analyzed.

Result and conclusion: Fourteen subjects’ data were analyzed in our study. The amplitude and latency of electrical P300 were similar to auditory ERP. But the ERP of visual modality had the largest amplitude and shortest latency. This result shows that electrical P300 can work as well as auditory P300 in BCIs, but not as good as visual P300. In experiment 2, the latency of electrical ERP occurred around 280 ms, and the amplitude and the topography showed that the largest amplitude was located around Cz electrode. This type of ERP in experiment 2 was considered as P3a, which also can be used in BCI systems.