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Could Anyone Use a BCI?

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Brain-Computer Interfaces

Part of the book series: Human-Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

Abstract

Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems can provide communication and control for many users, but not all users. This problem exists across different BCI approaches; a “universal” BCI that works for everyone has never been developed. Instead, about 20% of subjects are not proficient with a typical BCI system. Some groups have called this phenomenon “BCI illiteracy”. Some possible solutions have been explored, such as improved signal processing, training, and new tasks or instructions. These approaches have not resulted in a BCI that works for all users, probably because a small minority of users cannot produce detectable patterns of brain activity necessary to a particular BCI approach. We also discuss an underappreciated solution: switching to a different BCI approach. While the term “BCI illiteracy” elicits interesting comparisons between BCIs and natural languages, many issues are unclear. For example, comparisons across different studies have been problematic since different groups use different performance thresholds, and do not account for key factors such as the number of trials or size of the BCI’s alphabet. We also discuss challenges inherent in establishing widely used terms, definitions, and measurement approaches to facilitate discussions and comparisons among different groups.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by two grants: the Information and Communication Technologies Coordination and Support action “FutureBNCI”, Project number ICT-2010-248320; and the Information and Communication Technologies Collaborative Project action “BrainAble”, Project number ICT-2010-247447. We are grateful to Dr. Florin Popescu for suggesting the term “proficiency” as an alternative to “literacy”, and to Prof. Dr. John Polich, Prof. Dr. Andrea Kübler, Dr. Femke Nijboer, and Dr. Günter Krausz for comments. We thank Dr. Clemens Brunner for help with Figs. 3.1–3.3, and Dr. Jin Jing for providing Fig. 3.4. We also thank Josef Faller for help with formatting, and we thank an anonymous reviewer for insightful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Knowledge Discovery, Laboratory of Brain-Computer Interfaces, Graz University of Technology, Krenngasse 37/III, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Brendan Z. Allison & Christa Neuper

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 2/III, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Christa Neuper

Authors
  1. Brendan Z. Allison
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  2. Christa Neuper
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Correspondence to Brendan Z. Allison .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Researcher, Microsoft Research, One Microsoft Way,Redmond 11514 NE 1, Washington, 98052, Washington, USA

    Desney S. Tan

  2. Fac. Electrical Engineering,, Mathematics &Computer Science, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands

    Anton Nijholt

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Allison, B.Z., Neuper, C. (2010). Could Anyone Use a BCI?. In: Tan, D., Nijholt, A. (eds) Brain-Computer Interfaces. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-272-8_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-272-8_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-84996-271-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-84996-272-8

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