A Comparison of Mental Task Combinations for Asynchronous EEG-Based BCIs

Aiming at developing asynchronous BCIs, we tested 21 2-class combinations of 7 mental tasks to determine whether any pair of tasks may be more suitable. The tasks under consideration were: auditory recall, mental navigation, sensorimotor attention (left hand), sensorimotor attention (right hand), mental calculation, imaginary movement (left hand), imaginary movement (right hand). Sensorimotor attention is novel in this application domain. All possible pairs were tried in 5 subjects using data from 10s periods in which subjects were free to execute the required mental task at their own pace. Recordings were done whilst the subject controlled a robot navigation simulator on a computer monitor, with the robot direction being related to the mental task. Classification of the data was done using LDA. Class-separation was estimated using the Davies-Bouldin index. Best classification results were obtained when auditory recall was followed or preceded by mental calculation. Of the possible 21 task combinations, this task pair was in the top 5 (performance-wise) for 4 of the 5 subjects. This was also the case when class-separation was used as a criterion.