Improvement of BCI operation accuracy by the VR human body motion feedback

Abstract

This paper proposes a brain-computer interface virtual reality (BCI-VR) to improve brain-computer interface (BCI) operation accuracy using hand animation feedback by virtual reality. At first, we thought event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/ERS) response is easier to detect in the case of imagining of hand than in the case of imagining of arm since the corresponding area of the motor cortex of the hand is larger than that of the arm. As a result, we assumed that BCI operation accuracy is improved. Thus, we compared the effect of imagining of making fists and of imagining of conventional arm raising. Also, we conducted an experiment to operate the BCI to find BCI accuracy of operation, and a sense of agency (SOA) was obtained using the seven-point Likert scale. The results demonstrated that the imagine of making fists was higher than the conventional imagine of arm raising in both the average of operation accuracy and the SOA. However, the Mann-Whitney's U test depicted no significant difference between the accuracy of the imagining of making fists and of imagining of arm raising. Additionally, it was found that there was a positive correlation between BCI operation accuracy and SOA. Therefore, motor imagery of making fists is considered to be good for improving the accuracy of the BCI operation but it needs to be verified. It was also suggested that the accuracy of BCI operation could be improved if the SOA could be obtained. In the future, we will continue to develop BCI-VR to improve the BCI.