TY - JOUR
T1 - Directional Decoding From EEG in a Center-Out Motor Imagery Task With Visual and Vibrotactile Guidance
AU - Hehenberger, Lea
AU - Batistic, Luka
AU - Sburlea, Andreea I.
AU - Müller-Putz, Gernot R.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the ERC Consolidator Grant no. 681231 Feel Your Reach.
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2021 Hehenberger, Batistic, Sburlea and Müller-Putz.
PY - 2021/9/24
Y1 - 2021/9/24
N2 - Motor imagery is a popular technique employed as a motor rehabilitation tool, or to control assistive devices to substitute lost motor function. In both said areas of application, artificial somatosensory input helps to mirror the sensorimotor loop by providing kinesthetic feedback or guidance in a more intuitive fashion than via visual input. In this work, we study directional and movement-related information in electroencephalographic signals acquired during a visually guided center-out motor imagery task in two conditions, i.e., with and without additional somatosensory input in the form of vibrotactile guidance. Imagined movements to the right and forward could be discriminated in low-frequency electroencephalographic amplitudes with group level peak accuracies of 70% with vibrotactile guidance, and 67% without vibrotactile guidance. The peak accuracies with and without vibrotactile guidance were not significantly different. Furthermore, the motor imagery could be classified against a resting baseline with group level accuracies between 76 and 83%, using either low-frequency amplitude features or μ and β power spectral features. On average, accuracies were higher with vibrotactile guidance, while this difference was only significant in the latter set of features. Our findings suggest that directional information in low-frequency electroencephalographic amplitudes is retained in the presence of vibrotactile guidance. Moreover, they hint at an enhancing effect on motor-related μ and β spectral features when vibrotactile guidance is provided.
AB - Motor imagery is a popular technique employed as a motor rehabilitation tool, or to control assistive devices to substitute lost motor function. In both said areas of application, artificial somatosensory input helps to mirror the sensorimotor loop by providing kinesthetic feedback or guidance in a more intuitive fashion than via visual input. In this work, we study directional and movement-related information in electroencephalographic signals acquired during a visually guided center-out motor imagery task in two conditions, i.e., with and without additional somatosensory input in the form of vibrotactile guidance. Imagined movements to the right and forward could be discriminated in low-frequency electroencephalographic amplitudes with group level peak accuracies of 70% with vibrotactile guidance, and 67% without vibrotactile guidance. The peak accuracies with and without vibrotactile guidance were not significantly different. Furthermore, the motor imagery could be classified against a resting baseline with group level accuracies between 76 and 83%, using either low-frequency amplitude features or μ and β power spectral features. On average, accuracies were higher with vibrotactile guidance, while this difference was only significant in the latter set of features. Our findings suggest that directional information in low-frequency electroencephalographic amplitudes is retained in the presence of vibrotactile guidance. Moreover, they hint at an enhancing effect on motor-related μ and β spectral features when vibrotactile guidance is provided.
KW - brain-computer interface
KW - directional decoding
KW - electroencephalography
KW - kinesthetic guidance
KW - motor imagery
KW - vibrotactile guidance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85116906155&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fnhum.2021.687252
DO - 10.3389/fnhum.2021.687252
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85116906155
SN - 1662-5161
VL - 15
JO - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
M1 - 687252
ER -