Spüler Martin, Niethammer Christian
Computer Science Department, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2015 Mar 26;9:155. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00155. eCollection 2015.
When a person recognizes an error during a task, an error-related potential (ErrP) can be measured as response. It has been shown that ErrPs can be automatically detected in tasks with time-discrete feedback, which is widely applied in the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) for error correction or adaptation. However, there are only a few studies that concentrate on ErrPs during continuous feedback. With this study, we wanted to answer three different questions: (i) Can ErrPs be measured in electroencephalography (EEG) recordings during a task with continuous cursor control? (ii) Can ErrPs be classified using machine learning methods and is it possible to discriminate errors of different origins? (iii) Can we use EEG to detect the severity of an error? To answer these questions, we recorded EEG data from 10 subjects during a video game task and investigated two different types of error (execution error, due to inaccurate feedback; outcome error, due to not achieving the goal of an action). We analyzed the recorded data to show that during the same task, different kinds of error produce different ErrP waveforms and have a different spectral response. This allows us to detect and discriminate errors of different origin in an event-locked manner. By utilizing the error-related spectral response, we show that also a continuous, asynchronous detection of errors is possible. Although the detection of error severity based on EEG was one goal of this study, we did not find any significant influence of the severity on the EEG.
当一个人在执行任务过程中识别出错误时,与之相关的错误相关电位(ErrP)可作为一种反应被测量出来。研究表明,在具有时间离散反馈的任务中可以自动检测到ErrP,这种反馈在脑机接口(BCI)领域中被广泛应用于错误纠正或自适应调整。然而,仅有少数研究关注连续反馈过程中的ErrP。在本研究中,我们想要回答三个不同的问题:(i)在具有连续光标控制的任务中,能否从脑电图(EEG)记录中测量出ErrP?(ii)能否使用机器学习方法对ErrP进行分类,以及是否有可能区分不同来源的错误?(iii)我们能否利用EEG检测错误的严重程度?为了回答这些问题,我们在一个视频游戏任务中记录了10名受试者的EEG数据,并研究了两种不同类型的错误(执行错误,由于反馈不准确;结果错误,由于未达成动作目标)。我们对记录的数据进行分析,结果表明在同一任务中,不同类型的错误会产生不同的ErrP波形,并且具有不同的频谱响应。这使我们能够以事件锁定的方式检测和区分不同来源的错误。通过利用与错误相关的频谱响应,我们表明也可以进行连续、异步的错误检测。尽管基于EEG检测错误严重程度是本研究的一个目标,但我们并未发现严重程度对EEG有任何显著影响。