g.tec Guger Technologies OG, Schiedlberg, Austria.
Clin EEG Neurosci. 2011 Oct;42(4):214-8. doi: 10.1177/155005941104200405.
A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) provides a completely new output pathway that can provide an additional option for a person to express himself/herself if he/she suffers a disorder like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brainstem stroke, brain or spinal cord injury or other diseases which impair the function of the common output pathways which are responsible for the control of muscles. For a P300 based BCI a matrix of randomly flashing characters is presented to the participant. To spell a character the person has to attend to it and to count how many times the character flashes. Although most BCIs are designed to help people with disabilities, they are mainly tested on healthy, young subjects who may achieve better results than people with impairments. In this study we compare measurements, performed on people suffering motor impairments, such as stroke or ALS, to measurements performed on healthy people. The overall accuracy of the persons with motor impairments reached 70.1% in comparison to 91% obtained for the group of healthy subjects. When looking at single subjects, one interesting example shows that under certain circumstances, when it is difficult for a patient to concentrate on one character for a longer period of time, the accuracy is higher when fewer flashes (i.e., stimuli) are presented. Furthermore, the influence of several tuning parameters is discussed as it shows that for some participants adaptations for achieving valuable spelling results are required. Finally, exclusion criteria for people who are not able to use the device are defined.
脑机接口（BCI）提供了一条全新的输出途径，如果一个人患有肌萎缩侧索硬化症（ALS）、脑干中风、脑或脊髓损伤或其他疾病，这些疾病会损害负责控制肌肉的常见输出途径的功能，那么他/她可以通过这条途径来表达自己。对于基于 P300 的 BCI，会向参与者呈现一个随机闪烁字符的矩阵。为了拼写一个字符，这个人必须注意它，并计算字符闪烁的次数。尽管大多数 BCI 都是为帮助残疾人士设计的，但它们主要在健康的年轻受试者身上进行测试，这些受试者可能比有障碍的人取得更好的结果。在这项研究中，我们比较了患有运动障碍（如中风或 ALS）的人的测量结果和健康人的测量结果。与健康受试者组获得的 91%相比，运动障碍患者的总体准确率达到了 70.1%。当观察单个受试者时，有一个有趣的例子表明，在某些情况下，当患者难以长时间集中注意力于一个字符时，呈现较少的闪烁（即刺激）时，准确率更高。此外，还讨论了几个调整参数的影响，因为它表明对于某些参与者，需要进行一些适应性调整，才能获得有价值的拼写结果。最后，还定义了无法使用该设备的人的排除标准。
