Four Novel Motion Paradigms Based on Steady-State Motion Visual Evoked Potential.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this paper was to study the applicability of paradigms with motion forms for use in a brain-computer interface (BCI). We examined the performances of different paradigms and evaluated the stimulus effects.

METHODS: We designed four novel stimulus paradigms based on basic motion modes: swing, rotation, spiral, and radial contraction-expansion. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) was used to analyze the accuracy. Additionally, we optimized CCA template signal harmonic combinations for the different motion paradigms.

RESULTS: The spiral motion paradigm exhibited the highest average information transfer rate (ITR) and recognition accuracy (41.24 bit/min-1 /95.33%), and the average ITRs and recognition accuracies were lowest for the rotation motion paradigm (31.89 bit/min-1 /80.89%) and the radial contraction-expansion motion paradigm (32.62 bit/min-1 /80.72%) because they include fewer harmonic components.

CONCLUSION: Any stimulus paradigms with periodic motion can induce steady-state motion visual evoked potentials (SSMVEPs), but the SSMVEP harmonic components induced by different motion modes differed significantly. The spiral motion paradigm was more suitable for BCI applications.

SIGNIFICANCE: This study is an important extension to the existing SSMVEP-based BCI literature, and provides new insight to enable future design of the BCI paradigms.