IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2022;30:2486-2493. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2022.3198970. Epub 2022 Sep 2.
A proportion of users cannot achieve adequate brain-computer interface (BCI) control. The diversity of BCI modalities provides a way to solve this emerging issue. Here, we investigate the accuracy of a somatosensory BCI based on sensory imagery (SI). During the SI tasks, subjects were instructed to imagine a tactile sensation and to maintain the attention on the corresponding hand, as if there was tactile stimulus on the skin of the wrist. The performance across 106 healthy subjects in left- and right-hand SI discrimination was 78.9±13.2%. In 70.7% of the subjects the performance was above 70%. The SI task induced a contralateral cortical activation, and high-density EEG source localization showed that the real tactile stimulation and imagined tactile stimulation shared similar cortical activations within the somatosensory cortex. The somatosensory BCI based on SI provides a new signal modality for independent BCI development. Moreover, a combination of SI and other BCI modalities, such as motor imagery, may provide new avenues for further improving BCI usage and applicability, especially in those subjects unable to attain adequate BCI control with conventional BCI modalities.
一部分用户无法实现充分的脑机接口 (BCI) 控制。BCI 模式的多样性为解决这一新兴问题提供了途径。在这里，我们研究了基于感觉意象 (SI) 的体感 BCI 的准确性。在 SI 任务中，要求受试者想象一种触觉，并将注意力集中在相应的手上，就好像手腕皮肤上有触觉刺激一样。106 名健康受试者在左手和右手 SI 辨别任务中的表现为 78.9±13.2%。在 70.7%的受试者中，表现超过 70%。SI 任务诱导了对侧皮层激活，高密度 EEG 源定位显示，真实触觉刺激和想象触觉刺激在体感皮层内共享相似的皮层激活。基于 SI 的体感 BCI 为独立的 BCI 开发提供了新的信号模式。此外，SI 与其他 BCI 模式（如运动想象）的结合，可能为进一步提高 BCI 的使用和适用性提供新途径，特别是对于那些无法通过传统 BCI 模式获得充分 BCI 控制的受试者。
