Oscillatory Source Tensor Discriminant Analysis (OSTDA): A regularized tensor pipeline for SSVEP-based BCI systems

Challenges of neural interfaces for stroke motor rehabilitation

More than 85% of stroke survivors suffer from different degrees of disability for the rest of their lives. They will require support that can vary from occasional to full time assistance. These conditions are also associated to an enormous economic impact for their families and health care systems. Current rehabilitation treatments have limited efficacy and their long-term effect is controversial. Here we review different challenges related to the design and development of neural interfaces for rehabilitative purposes. We analyze current bibliographic evidence of the effect of neuro-feedback in functional motor rehabilitation of stroke patients. We highlight the potential of these systems to reconnect brain and muscles. We also describe all aspects that should be taken into account to restore motor control. Our aim with this work is to help researchers designing interfaces that demonstrate and validate neuromodulation strategies to enforce a contingent and functional neural linkage between the central and the peripheral nervous system. We thus give clues to design systems that can improve or/and re-activate neuroplastic mechanisms and open a new recovery window for stroke patients.

Identification of spatial patterns with maximum association between power of resting state neural oscillations and trait anxiety

Anxiety affects approximately 5-10% of the adult population worldwide, placing a large burden on the health systems. Despite its omnipresence and impact on mental and physical health, most of the individuals affected by anxiety do not receive appropriate treatment. Current research in the field of psychiatry emphasizes the need to identify and validate biological markers relevant to this condition. Neurophysiological preclinical studies are a prominent approach to determine brain rhythms that can be reliable markers of key features of anxiety. However, while neuroimaging research consistently implicated prefrontal cortex and subcortical structures, such as amygdala and hippocampus, in anxiety, there is still a lack of consensus on the underlying neurophysiological processes contributing to this condition. Methods allowing non-invasive recording and assessment of cortical processing may provide an opportunity to help identify anxiety signatures that could be used as intervention targets. In this study, we apply Source-Power Comodulation (SPoC) to electroencephalography (EEG) recordings in a sample of participants with different levels of trait anxiety. SPoC was developed to find spatial filters and patterns whose power comodulates with an external variable in individual participants. The obtained patterns can be interpreted neurophysiologically. Here, we extend the use of SPoC to a multi-subject setting and test its validity using simulated data with a realistic head model. Next, we apply our SPoC framework to resting state EEG of 43 human participants for whom trait anxiety scores were available. SPoC inter-subject analysis of narrow frequency band data reveals neurophysiologically meaningful spatial patterns in the theta band (4-7 Hz) that are negatively correlated with anxiety. The outcome is specific to the theta band and not observed in the alpha (8-12 Hz) or beta (13-30 Hz) frequency range. The theta-band spatial pattern is primarily localised to the superior frontal gyrus. We discuss the relevance of our spatial pattern results for the search of biomarkers for anxiety and their application in neurofeedback studies.

An efficient CNN-LSTM Network with spectral normalization and label smoothing technologies for SSVEP frequency recognition

OBJECTIVE

Steady-state visual evoked potentials(SSVEPs) based braincomputer interface(BCI) has received great interests owing to the high information transfer rate(ITR) and available large number of targets. However, the performance of frequency recognition methods heavily depends on the amount of the calibration data for intra-subject classification. Some research adopted the deep learning(DL) algorithm to conduct the inter-subject classification, which could reduce the calculation procedure, but the performance still has large room to improve compared with the intra-subject classification.

APPROACH

To address these issues, we proposed an efficient SSVEP DL NETwork (termed SSVEPNET) based on 1D convolution and long short-term memory (LSTM) module. To enhance the performance of SSVEPNT, we adopted the spectral normalization and label smoothing technologies during implementing the network architecture. We evaluated the SSVEPNET and compared it with other methods for the intra- and inter-subject classification under different conditions, i.e., two datasets, two time-window lengths (1 s and 0.5 s), three sizes of training data.

MAIN RESULTS

Under all the experimental settings, the proposed SSVEPNET achieved the highest average accuracy for the intra- and inter-subject classification on the two SSVEP datasets, when compared with other traditional and DL baseline methods. Signif icance. The extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DL model holds promise to enhance frequency recognition performance in SSVEP-based BCIs. Besides, the mixed network structures with CNN and LSTM, and the spectral normalization and label smoothing could be useful optimization strategies to design efficient models for EEG data.