Brain–Computer Communication: Motivation, Aim, and Impact of Exploring a Virtual Apartment

TLDR

Moving BCI research from cue‑based laboratory settings to real‑world applications is essential for advancing practical brain‑computer interfaces. The study employed a virtual apartment that mimics a real environment, featuring a goal‑oriented task, high mental workload, and variable decision periods. In three training sessions, ten naive participants learned to navigate the virtual apartment using synchronous motor imagery lasting at least 2 s, with three EEG channels translating these signals into navigation commands, and the results showed that motivated subjects performed markedly better.

Abstract

The step away from a synchronized or cue-based brain-computer interface (BCI) and from laboratory conditions towards real world applications is very important and crucial in BCI research. This work shows that ten naive subjects can be trained in a synchronous paradigm within three sessions to navigate freely through a virtual apartment, whereby at every junction the subjects could decide by their own, how they wanted to explore the virtual environment (VE). This virtual apartment was designed similar to a real world application, with a goal-oriented task, a high mental workload, and a variable decision period for the subject. All subjects were able to perform long and stable motor imagery over a minimum time of 2 s. Using only three electroencephalogram (EEG) channels to analyze these imaginations, we were able to convert them into navigation commands. Additionally, it could be demonstrated that motivation is a very crucial factor in BCI research; motivated subjects perform much better than unmotivated ones.