Massachusetts Medical School aims to introduce Mindfulness into Medical Care

Dr. Judson Brewer, has been named as chief of the Division of Mindfulness. “The creation of a stand-alone Division of Mindfulness embedded within a Department of Medicine highlights how far the field has progressed and matured, and will create the infrastructure and support for researchers dedicated to furthering our neuroscientific knowledge of how the mind works, and for what medical conditions mindfulness is efficacious,” 

The move comes more than 30 years after the center’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) clinic was established at the university. Since then, more than 24,000 people have been trained in Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at the clinic.

There are several studies on mindfulness meditation someones using electroencephalography. One of the major challenges is to prove scientifically functional changes in the cerebral cortex by comparing results on individuals during, at least, 8 weeks of therapy.

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Intheon are Wiring for BCI/EEG Data Processing

At Intheon, our vision is to embed advanced neurotechnology into everyday life. We offer a middleware platform for biosignal interpretation, which is easily integrated into existing mobile and desktop applications through a cloud API. NeuroScale™ empowers developers to rapidly create transformative brain- and body-aware applications impacting medicine and health, interactive technology, marketing, education, and more.

Deep Learning Research Engineer – Neurotechnology

We are seeking a highly talented and motivated research engineer who is fascinated by the latest developments in ML/AI and is looking for the most exciting, challenging, and high-impact areas to apply them. You will be part of team of senior researchers and engineers where you will focus on designing and implementing advanced brain-computer interface technology using state of the art deep learning techniques. Your research & development will help power the coming generation of brain-based human-machine interfaces where neurotechnology is integrated into everyday life.

• You will work directly with senior staff on developing new methods for applying deep learning on EEG and other physiological data.
• You will write production-grade code and train Brain-Computer Interface models on large amounts of EEG data.

Staff Scientist – Neuroscientist

Taking advantage of large-scale electrophysiological (e.g. EEG) data is essential for training robust powerful machine learning systems capable of decoding brain state in complex environments. At Intheon you will be responsible for developing and applying technologies for large-scale EEG data analysis, powering the coming generation of brain-based human-machine interfaces where neurotechnology is integrated into everyday life.

• You will work directly with our senior staff on advancing the state of the art in large-scale EEG data processing and management.
• You will develop new computational methods for combining EEG features across multiple studies (meta-analysis).
• You will interpret analysis results and publish them in scientific journals.

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Brain-Computer Interfaces: Applications, Challenges and the Future

The Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) are systems that allow through the thought to execute commands on computers or electronic devices. This technology, based on the reading of brain electrical impulses and its signal processing, is becoming more and more accessible to ordinary people when it was previously confined to enclosed spaces such as research laboratories or hospital clinics.

When we talk about BCIs, we have great contributions to its dissemination through Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. These, in recent comments, have given as examples cars monitored with the mind or writing by thought. While the company Neuralink is recruiting experts in this field, the multinational Facebook has created a research department aimed at implementing a solution that allows you to write 100 words per minute on a computer, tablet or smartphone, just thinking. With the daily technological advance, associated with artificial intelligence increasingly present in data processing, the question to be asked will not be "if it is possible" but rather "when it will be possible". The BCIs present today as a technology of high potential, although in embryonic phase.

In my opinion, an example of enormous success in the medical field refers to Locked-In syndrome. There are patients who are permanently bedridden for weeks or months, in the conscious state, but without their body being able to communicate with the outside, only being able to hear and some have sensitivity to the touch. Using the electroencephalography, with the placement of sensors in the patient's head, BCIs allow the reading and identification of thought patterns. Once two of these patterns can be clearly identified, with the help of a computer that processes and classifies the signal, the patient will be able to answer "Yes" or "No" to the questions posed. Even within the limitations described, imagine the happiness of the patient and his family when establishing this communication channel.

Many other solutions are now used in the area of ​​BCIs, such as neuro-prosthetics, treatment of attention disorders, neuro-rehabilitation or simply fun and leisure. Regarding this last example, the MindX game is being developed at the Champalimaud Foundation, with the aim of "flying" between circles that appear on the screen. In order to perform this movement, the player uses only the thought, controlling in a natural way his movements. Contrary to other systems presented a little around the world, this solution developed by a team of portuguese neuroscientists does not require days of training. Its use is practically immediate, representing a huge advance and potential of applicability on new scenarios.

(This article was published @ pplware.sapo.pt)

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A Trip through the Cerebral Cortex by High-Throughput Array Tomography

It is very important to understand the structure and all synapses responsible for the electrical impulses inside our brain. Make a trip through the interior of the brain, from somatosensory cortex to white matter:

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SMART - Open Source Platform for Healthcare

SMART Health IT is an open based technology platform that enables innovators to create apps that seamlessly and securely run across the healthcare system. Using an electronic health record (EHR) system or data warehouse that supports the SMART standard, patients, doctors, and healthcare practitioners can draw on this library of apps to improve clinical care, research, and public health.

The SMART App Gallery provides a central place to connect apps and app users, offering developers a free and open way to share their apps and healthcare providers an easy way to find and try SMART compatible apps.

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FB Career Openings for BCI

Facebook has more than 2500 career openings including some jobs related to Brain-Computer Interfaces.

As rumors pile up that Facebook is working on moving into consumer hardware, all eyes remain on the company’s Building 8 division, which handles those projects. Dugan presented onstage at Facebook’s F8 conference this year, talking about some of the company’s more long-shot projects, like embeddable brain sensors that could promote a more tight interface with hardware products.

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BCI Award 2017 - Submission Deadline

The International Annual BCI-Research Award, endowed with 6,000 USD, is one of the top accolades in BCI research. The Award was created to recognize outstanding and innovative research in the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces. The Award is open to any brain-computer interface research worldwide and 12 projects are nominated before the winner is announced.

FACTS

• The 12 nominated projects will be invited to submit a chapter to be published in Springer
• The winner gets 3,000 USD, the 2nd place 2,000 USD and the 3rd place 1,000 USD
• The BCI-award is donated by g.tec, a leading provider of BCI research equipment 
• The competition is open to any BCI group worldwide. .

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Modeling 10,000 Neurons in the Visual Cortex

Scientists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science create models of neurons in the visual cortex of the mouse. With this work it is possible to understand better the neurons connections and the complexity to aquire EEG in a human brain.  

This movie shows preliminary data of 10,000 neurons: 8,000 replicated pyramidal cells (an excitatory neuron, shown first) and 2,000 replicated interneurons (an inhibitory neuron, shown second). Copies of these two cells are displayed one after another in the movie until approximately 10% of the whole model is shown; more than that would be too cluttered to see what is happening. Toward the middle of the movie, the cells are colored according to their properties: excitatory in red and inhibitory in blue. The second half of the movie illustrates activity of the cells in a two second-long simulation. The cells that fire action potentials are intermittently highlighted, giving the viewer an impression of the simulated neuronal activity.

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VR Headset for Smartphones with Eye Tracking and EEG Brain Sensors

The company LooxiLabs from South Korea just released on the market a Brain Wave solution with 6 EEG frontal channels + Eye Information + Open SDK.

Signal resolution:

• Data transmission rate: 250 SPS Resolution: 24 bits
• Bandwidth: To provide 1-50Hz, 7-13Hz, 15-50Hz, 5-50Hz Bandpass filters.
• 50Hz and 60Hz Notch filters Filtering: 2nd order Butterworth iir filter
• Dynamic range: +/- 2.5V analog operating voltage

Looxid Labs Development Kit is the world’s first VR headset embedded with miniaturized eye and brain sensors. The Development Kit provides information about where the users have looked and how the users’ brains are activated in VR, enabling early adopters and developers to create unique and incredible experience for VR users. Acquiring a considerable number of bio-signal datasets is key to defining user’s emotions by machine learning algorithm. Thus, we have been working on the experiment in which a research participant watches a series of VR contents and responds to the surveys on their feeling while wearing our VR headset embedded with eye tracking cameras and EEG sensors. 

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Learning Python with Dan Bader

Python is a great programming language that you can apply in a easy way to BCI/EEG. If you want to increase your knowledge in this area follow the videos of Dan Bader explaining it in a simple and coherent way.

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Creating EEG Graphs from Raw Data

RAW Graphs is an open source data visualization framework built with the goal of making the visual representation of complex data. Primarily conceived as a tool for designers and vis geeks, RAW Graphs aims at providing a missing link between spreadsheet applications (e.g. Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, OpenRefine) and vector graphics editors (e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, Sketch).

The project, led and maintained by the DensityDesign Research Lab (Politecnico di Milano) was released publicly in 2013 and is regarded by many as one of the most important tools in the field of data visualization.

You can convert a EEG file to CSV, drag & drop it and get a data graphic representation.

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3D Rotative Graph from a CSV file using Python

There are several modules in Python to create different types of graphs. "The Python Graph Gallery" brings together several examples, as rotating 3D chart, created from a data file in CSV format. The next code, from Yan Holtz, save 70 PNG images in the "filename" folder. Then you just need to convert them to GIF format using, for example, gifmaker.me. This code can easily be adapted to read EEG data files.

# library
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
import seaborn as sns

# Get the data (csv file is hosted on the web)
url = 'https://python-graph-gallery.com/wp-content/uploads/volcano.csv'
data = pd.read_csv(url)

# Transform it to a long format
df=data.unstack().reset_index()
df.columns=["X","Y","Z"]

# And transform the old column name in something numeric
df['X']=pd.Categorical(df['X'])
df['X']=df['X'].cat.codes

# We are going to do 20 plots, for 20 different angles
for angle in range(70,210,2):

   # Make the plot
   fig = plt.figure()
   ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')
   ax.plot_trisurf(df['Y'], df['X'], df['Z'], cmap=plt.cm.viridis, linewidth=0.2)

   # Set the angle of the camera
   ax.view_init(30,angle)

   # Save it
   filename='PNG/ANIMATION/Volcano_step'+str(angle)+'.png'
   plt.savefig(filename, dpi=96)
   plt.gca()

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Brain-Computer Interface online free course

Christian Kothe, from SCCN/UCSD, presents an online course on BCI designed with a focus on modern methods. It includes basics of EEG, BCI, signal processing, machine learning, and also contains tutorials on using BCILAB and the lab streaming layer software. Although it was published in 2012 it maintains several BCI principles.

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Mental Work using a Motorized Wheel

The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, as a new demonstration of brainwave reading technology. It will involve EEG being connected to a motorized wheel. People will be controlling the movement of the device while the data their brainwaves generate will be anonymized, collected, and provided to researchers for study.

“The industrial revolution was a dangerous period in history, literally dangerous for the laborer who might lose a hand while not paying attention. Now we are in the cognitive revolution and the stakes are potentially higher. Today, that won’t happen because you are not in touch with the machine in any physical way. Instead, you may lose your mind.”

For more information about BCI/EGG press here.

Today we exceeded 100,000 Views

BCI over EEG is today one of the most popular blogs 
dedicated to Brain-Computer Interfaces.

Typing 100 Words in a Smartphone using just Your Mind

As I published during June 2017, Facebook aims to allow people to type 100 words per minute with just your mind, 5X faster than typing on a smartphone. Knowing the technological evolution that we are living, in your opinion, how many years Facebook will need to create this BCI solution? The possible answers are: 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years or never. Share your opinion pressing here.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Brain Sciences Journal

Brain Sciences is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes original articles, critical reviews, research notes and short communications in the areas of cognitive neuroscience, developmental neuroscience, molecular and cellular neuroscience, neural engineering, neuroimaging, neurolinguistics, clinical neuroscience, systems neuroscience, and theoretical and computational neuroscience. 

Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on the length of the papers. The full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Electronic files or software regarding the full details of the calculation and experimental procedure, if unable to be published in a normal way, can be deposited as supplementary material.

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EEGrunt: A Collection Python EEG

EEGrunt consists of a collection of functions for reading EEG data from CSV files, converting and filtering it in various ways, and finally generating pretty and informative visualizations.

Features

• EEGrunt is compatible with data from OpenBCI and Muse.
• EEGrunt has bandpass, notch, and highpass filters for cleaning up powerline interference, OpenBCI's DC offset, and zeroing in on the frequency band you want to analyze.
• EEGrunt makes it easy to generate signal plots, amplitude trend graphs, spectrograms, and FFT (fast-fouier transform) graphs, etc.

Here is my small code adaptation from the original analyze_data.py file:

# Download the required files from https://github.com/curiositry/EEGrunt
import EEGrunt
source = 'openbci'
path = 'data/'
filename = 'eegrunt-obci-ovibe-test-data.csv'
session_title = "OpenBCI EEGrunt Test Data"

EEG = EEGrunt.EEGrunt(path, filename, source, session_title)
EEG.plot = 'show'

EEG.load_data()
print "\n\n\nChannels:" + str(EEG.channels)

for channel in EEG.channels:
    EEG.load_channel(channel)
    print("Processing channel "+ str(EEG.channel))
    EEG.remove_dc_offset()
    EEG.notch_mains_interference()
    EEG.signalplot()
    EEG.get_spectrum_data()

    EEG.data = EEG.bandpass(0,1)
    EEG.spectrogram()
    EEG.plot_band_power(8,12,"Alpha")
    EEG.plot_spectrum_avg_fft( )

EEG.showplots()

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40th International Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference, Hawaii

The theme of the meeting, from July 17-21, 2018, is “Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future”, inspired by the 40th anniversary of the world’s largest international biomedical engineering meeting.

Proposals for Workshops, Tutorials, Invited Sessions, Mini-Symposia and Special Sessions are invited. Submission opens on September 1, 2017 and closes November 1, 2017. 

Formore information about BCI/EEG press here.

Translational and Regenerative Medicine Conference, Italy

The International Translational and Regenerative Medicine Conference, from April 25-27, 2018 aims to the “Need for translational medicine, Challenges in translational medicine, and Opportunities in translational medicine”. Discover the advances in health practice, management and education in relation to health disparities as well as a breadth of other topics.

Conference Themes

• Translational therapeutics/ Novel therapeutic technologies
• Translational Neuroscience
• Biomedical sciences / Bioengineering
• Bio Molecular/ Nuclear imaging
• Stem cells/ Regenerative Medicine
• Translational Stem Cell Research
• Scaffold in regenerative medicine
• (...)

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Annual BCI Award 2017 Nominees

List of the twelve nominees during the Annual BCI Award 2017 conference.

• BCI prosthetic hand to control phantom limb pain
• Implantable Communication BCI for Home-Use in Locked-In Syndrome
• A brain-spine interface to alleviate gait deficits after spinal cord injury
• BCI for Communication with Patients in Completely Locked-in State
• Individual word classification during imagined speech
• Restoration of finger movements in everyday life environments using a hybrid brain/neural hand exoskeleton
• Rethinking BCI Paradigm and Machine Learning Algorithm as a Symbiosis: Zero Calibration, Guaranteed Convergence and High Decoding Performance
• Targeted up-conditioning of contralesional corticospinal pathways promotes motor recovery in poststroke patients with severe chronic hemiplegia
• Gold Standard for epilepsy/tumor surgery coupled with deep learning offers independence to a promising functional mapping modality
• High Performance BCI in Controlling an Avatar Using the Missing Hand Representation in Long Term Amputees
• Online adaptive BCI with attention variations
• Which BCI paradigm is better to induce agency or sense of control over movements?

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SigViewer 0.6.1 - View EEG raw data

SigViewer is a viewing application for biosignals such as EEG or MEG time series. In addition to viewing raw data, SigViewer can also create, edit, and display event information (such as annotations or artifact selections). Available formats: GDF, EDF, BDF, DAT, CNT, VHDR, BKR and EVT.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Neuralink is Looking for BCI Engineers and Scientists

Neuralink, the BCI company from Elon Musk based in San Francisco, are looking for engineers and scientists.

Neuralink is developing ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers. No neuroscience experience is required: talent and drive matter far more. We expect most of our team to come from other areas and industries. We are primarily looking for evidence of exceptional ability and a track record of building things that work.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

First Biannual Neuroadaptive Technology Conference, Berlin

In July 2017, during 3 days, was held in Berlin the First Biannual Neuroadaptive Technology Conference where several scientific papers related to BCI were presented. Here are the titles of the various themes published that can be found here.

Keynote Lectures

• IMPLICIT USER INTERFACES
• COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE OF HUMAN EEG – I see a solution. 
• APPLIED NEUROTECHNOLOGY - Towards clinical applications of neuroadaptive brain-computer interfaces 
• UBIQUITOUS NEUROTECHNOLOGY IN THE CLOUD - Into The Wild: When Neurotechnology Escapes the Lab and Other Adventures in Translation
• NEUROETHICS - Sense of agency and responsibility in neuroadapted action 

Neuroadaptive Technology: Concepts

• COGNITIVE PROBING FOR AUTOMATED NEUROADAPTATION 
• ENDOWING THE MACHINE WITH ACTIVE INFERENCE: A GENERIC FRAMEWORK TO IMPLEMENT ADAPTIVE BCI 
• LEARNING FROM LABEL PROPORTIONS IN BCI -- A SYMBIOTIC DESIGN FOR STIMULUS PRESENTATION AND SIGNAL DECODING 

Evaluation Methodology

• FROM UNIVARIATE TO MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF fNIRS DATA 
• A GENERALIZED DEEP LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR CROSS-DOMAIN LEARNING IN BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACES 
• TIME-FREQUENCY SENSITIVITY CHARACTERIZATION OF SINGLE- TRIAL OSCILLATORY EEG COMPONENTS 

Neuroergonomics

• EEG, ECG AND EOG RESPONSES TO AUTOMATED, REAL DRIVING 
• CLASSIFICATION OF CONCENTRATION LEVELS USING DEEP NEURAL NETWORKS 
• ASSESSING IMPLICIT ATTITUDES DURING HUMAN-TECHNOLOGY INTERACTION BASED ON NEUROELECTRICAL EVIDENCE 

EEG Methodology

• BETWEEN-SUBJECT TRANSFER LEARNING FOR CLASSIFICATION OF ERROR-RELATED SIGNALS IN HIGH-DENSITY EEG 
• TRACING RHYTHMIC REGULARITY PROCESSING: BEAT-BASED BETA POWER MODULATION IN EEG SOURCE SPACE 
• EXPRESS ESTIMATION OF BRAIN RHYTHM POWER FOR LOW-LATENCY NEUROFEEDBACK 

Neuroadaptive Technology: Applications

• INVESTIGATING NEUROADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGY FOR SPEED READING APPLICATIONS 
• TOWARD NEUROADAPTIVE PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS 
• GAZE DIRECTION AND THE EEG MARKER FOR INTENTION/EXPECTATION IN HYBRID INTERFACES 

Physiological Computing

• WEARABLE SENSORS, DRIVING AND THE VISUALIZATION OF CARDIOVASCULAR STRESS DURING EVERYDAY LIFE 
• EVALUATING FNIRS-BASED WORKLOAD DISCRIMINATION IN A REALISTIC DRIVING SCENARIO 
• FIVE LAYER MODEL FOR PHYSIOLOGICAL COMPUTING 

Passive BCI

• DETECTION OF FEEDBACK-RELATED MENTAL STATES WITH ERROR-RELATED SPECTRAL PERTURBATION 
• A COLLABORATIVE BCI TRAINED TO AID GROUP DECISIONS IN A 
• VISUAL SEARCH TASK WORKS Well WITH SIMILAR TASKS 
• PASSIVE BCI TOOLS FOR MENTAL state estimation in aeroSPACE APPLICATIONS 

Physiological Computing

• CORTICO-CORTICAL SPECTRAL RESPONSES ELICITED BY CLOSED LOOP STIMULATION IN THE SHEEP SOMATOSENSORY CORTEX 
• CLASSIFICATION OF EMOTIONS USING CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORKS – AN EEG STUDY 
• CLASSIFICATION OF CORTICAL RESPONSES TO VISUAL TARGETS DURING A PHYSICAL-COGNITIVE INTERACTION TASK 

Neuroadaptive Technology: Methods

• INVESTIGATING RESPONSES TO LETTER PRESENTATIONS IN A SEGMENT SPELLER 
• USING BCIS FOR BENCHMARKING ADAPTIVE AND LOW-RESOLUTION DAQ EEG APPROACHES 
• INTELLIGENT THRESHOLD SELECTION FOR BIOCYBERNETIC LOOP IN AN ADAPTIVE VIDEO GAME CONTEXT 

MoBI

• MOBILE BRAIN / BODY IMAGING (MoBI) OF PHYSICAL INTERACTION WITH DYNAMICALLY MOVING OBJECTS 
• EEG AND EMG SYNCHRONIZATION AND JITTER ESTIMATION FOR MOBI EXPERIMENTS 
• NEURAL CORRELATES OF HUMAN single- and dual-task NATURAL WALKING IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT 

Neuroethics

• NEUROETHICS FOR NEUROADAPTIVE TECHNOLOGY: THE CASE OF PASSIVE BRAIN-COMPUTER INTERFACES 
• HACKING MINDS, HACKING BRAINS, HACKING AUGMENTED BODIES: ETHICAL ASPECTS OF NEUROHACKING 
• EVALUATING BRAIN READING’S PRACTICAL APPLICABILITY 

Wearable Sensors

• INTERACTING WITH WEARABLE COMPUTERS BY MEANS OF FUNCTIONAL ELECTRICAL MUSCLE STIMULATION 
• MEASURING ACADEMIC STRESS ‘IN THE WILD’ WITH WEARABLE SENSORS: REMOVAL OF NOISE FROM WEARABLE SENSOR DATA USING FIR FILTERS 
• MOBILE BRAIN/BODY IMAGING (MOBI) OF SPATIAL KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION DURING UNCONSTRAINED EXPLORATION IN VR 

Poster Session

• SIGNAL ANALYSIS OF MOTOR IMAGERY TASKS FOR SELF-PACED BCI APPLICATIONS 
• FUNCTIONAL CORTICAL NETWORKS FOR AUDITORY DISTRACTOR SUPRESSION DURING A REALISTIC VISUAL SEARCH TASK 
• RE-THINKING BCI MODELS AS NOISY SENSORS FOR NEURAL ANALYSIS 
• A BIOFEEDBACK APPROACH TO INVESTIGATE NEUROCOGNITIVE MECHANISMS OF FEEDBACK-BASED LEARNING 
• FINDING EEG FREQUENCY BANDS RELATED TO CONCENTRATION 
• DEVELOPMENT OF A NEUROADAPTIVE GAMING TECHNOLOGY TO DISTRACT FROM PAINFUL PROCEDURES 
• CORTICAL SOURCE LOCALIZATION OF EEG BIOMARKERS IN A COGNITIVE BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACE MONITORING WORKING MEMORY LOAD 
• DESIGNING AND UNDERSTANDING CONVOLUTIONAL NETWORKS FOR DECODING EXECUTED MOVEMENTS FROM EEG 
• SIGMABOX: TOWARDS A SIMPLE AND EFFICIENT MATLAB TOOLBOX FOR EEG SIGNAL PROCESSING AND CLASSIFICATION 
• EEG-BASED BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION: A PRELIMINARY STUDY 
• MEASURING COGNITIVE CONFLICT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 
• NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF EFFICIENT LEARNING IN THE NEUROFEEDBACK PARADIGM

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EEG Python Algorithms

New algorithms applied to classification and processing of EEG data will allow to identify more clear behavior patterns related to an action thought by the user. This is one of the objectives of my BCI PhD work that I will share with you soon. The approach will be done in a first phase through the EMOTIV equipment and Python language also using statistical signal processing techniques. If you have interest in this matter stay tuned!

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

BCI Journal

Promoted by BCI Society, the BCI journal aims to be a information repository, with "Journal News", "Call of Papers" and much more, making available its reading to the scientific community and to all those who are interested in this area.

BCI journal publishes high quality, original research articles encompassing analysis of theoretical and practical advances in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. Articles should expand upon novel and innovative research where the methods, analysis and conclusions are robust and of the highest standard.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

2nd World Congress & Expo on Nanotechnology and Materials Science during June 25-27, 2018 Dubai, UAE

This World Congress aims to gather researchers, renowned speakers, Nanotechnologists, Nanotech-engineers, Pharmaceutical professionals and leading specialists in order to discuss current developments and future trends in Nanotechnology and Materials Science. The scientific program paves a way to gather visionaries through the research talks and presentations and put forward many thought provoking strategies. 

Benefits of Attending

• All accepted abstracts will be published in the respective Journals
• Each abstract will receive a DOI provided by Cross Ref
• Special privileges on group registrations
• Chance of B2B meeting
• Opportunity to organize Workshop/Symposium

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The ambitions of Elon Musk and the future of BCI/BMI according to Gerwin Schalk

Neuralink will build a brain computer interface (BCI) or "neural lace" that will eventually "upload thoughts" to the internet but, along the way, deftly heal those with epilepsy, Parkinson's and depression, and restore function to people with stroke and brain injury for good measure. What could Musk's lace possibly look like?

The basic brief for any BCI is to record the electrical activity of brain cells and sometimes squirt back a little voltage to stimulate those same cells. EEG records brain waves from outside the skull, but high fidelity means getting up close, generally by draping an array of 100-200 electrodes over the dura, the brain's hard outer layer, or plunging electrodes directly into the squishy stuff. These deeper brain dives have, already, produced some astounding results.

Deep brain stimulation has helped people with uncontrollable tremor from Parkinson's hold a cup of coffee. In epilepsy, the NeuroPacedevice senses an impending fit and heads it off with a judicious surge of current. A DARPA program culminated in a paralysed woman using her thoughts to control a robotic arm and gently shake hands with an incredulous interviewer. And a February article reports that a woman paralysed with Lou Gehrig's disease used the BrainGate device to type at a record eight words per minute. With her thoughts.

There is, however, a big problem with sticking things in the brain.

"You have an electrode that's hard and artificial, it's made of metal and it's spiky. And on the other side is the brain that's soft, chemical, electrical and pliable. Those two things don't work together all that great," says Schalk, with neuroscientist deadpan.

Brains get traumatised, scar tissue forms around electrodes, the signal degrades, the body rejects the device, and so on.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Mindreach - A Portuguese BCI Startup Company

MindReach is a company created by the neuroscientist Rui Costa dedicated to BCI/EEG research. As already mentioned in previous posts, Mindreach is one more company that contributes to the development of an interface that over time will radically change the way we deal with electronic devices.

Mindreach offers an end-to-end product that uses an electroencephalography (EEG) headset coupled with a dedicated training software platform allowing users to learn to directly control activity in pre-frontal cortex, and as a first approach correct abnormal brain patterns, as is the case of Attention deficit hyperactivity disoder (ADHD) and other conditions. Our solution can be expanded and integrated with a wide range of on-the-market effector devices, such as other controllers, neuro-rehabilitation equipment and neuro-prosthetics.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

A BCI-based Environmental Control System for Patients with Severe Spinal Cord Injuries

Rui Zhang, Qihong Wang and Kai Li present a BCI-based environmental control system that integrates household electrical appliances, a nursing bed, and an intelligent wheelchair with automated navigation function. Synchronous and asynchronous control modes are employed in different situations to provide more natural and practical control. Specifically, the asynchronous mode, which can infer from the ongoing EEG whether the user intends to execute his/her control through the BCI, is for switching the environmental control system on or off or for selecting a device (e.g., a TV) to control. 

Furthermore, a verification mechanism and several pseudo-keys are introduced into our paradigm to effectively reduce false operations in the asynchronous mode. Once a device is switched on, the synchronous mode, generally with a higher BCI detection performance of accuracy and speed than the asynchronous mode, is used for function selection, such as channel selection for a TV. Two experiments involving six paralyzed patients with severe spinal cord injuries (SCIs) were separately carried out in a nursing bed and a wheelchair. Experimental results indicated that all the SCI patients could operate the household electrical appliances, the nursing bed and the intelligent wheelchair by using the BCI with satisfactory. The proposed environmental control system can thus be used to assist severely paralyzed people with SCIs in their daily life and improve their self-care abilities.

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NeuroFuse - a Brain Miracle Pills?

Neurofuse seems to have a brain miracle effect just in a few minutes. Some testimonials report the  "amazing" intense focus, mental clarity and cognitive precision results. True or false? We will wait for the answers.

Enhance Mind IQ, which has no recorded side effects in any clinical trials, was soon the target of critics who claimed it was too powerful to be sold without a prescription. Other people in academic circles insisted that Enhance Mind IQ provided an artificial edge for its users and was unfair to those who weren’t taking it. This led to it being banned from quiz shows and at many top universities as well. 

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Graz BCI Conference 2017

Three workshops will occur during Graz BCI Conference 2017:

• Cloud-based BCIs: challenges and opportunities of home-use systems for big data collection;
• Facilitators and barriers of using mobile EEG: a workshop using the extreme test case of BCIs for space flights;
• Passive BCI, Lab Streaming Layer, and Neuroadaptive Technology.

Cloud-based BCIs: challenges and opportunities of home-use systems for big data collection

Bringing brain-computer interfaces from the lab environment into the homes of patients and consumers requires three components: 

1. Cloud-based realtime signal processing and machine learning that generalises across large datasets, 
2. Low-cost, wireless EEG hardware with sufficient signal quality for scientific and clinical purposes, 
3. User-friendly, cross-platform software applications to make the system directly accessible to endusers. 

Tackling this challenge may be the key to enabling robust communication and control for patients, and breaking the limitations of current research in terms of sample size and longitudinal data. With this workshop we aim to bring experts from both inside and outside the BCI community together to inspire future work that will allow us to overcome existing boundaries, both in research and in clinical practice.

Facilitators and barriers of using mobile EEG: a workshop using the extreme test case of BCIs for space flights

Since the advent of mobile EEG with which the subject is no longer constrained by a lab environment, but can be tested in a realistic environment, an increasing number of application areas are opening up for investigation. For example, mobile EEG offers new research opportunities in Sports and Movement Science, Entertainment, Neuromarketing and more fundamental Cognitive Neuroscience. However, mobile EEG also confronts us with new technical and experimental challenges. During our workshop we aim to start a constructive multidisciplinary technology assessment to identify the main barriers and facilitators of mobile EEG. To facilitate the discussion, we focus on the extreme use scenario of Brain-Computer Interface research for space flights. Thus, speakers will first present their scientific findings, experience and challenges with mobile EEG. Then, we narrow the discussion to the extreme use scenario of BCI for space flights, which prepares workshop participants for a final group discussion.

Passive BCI, Lab Streaming Layer, and Neuroadaptive Technology

This workshop is aimed at participants interested in applications of BCI technology in Human‐Computer Interaction for users without disabilities. It is intended to represent the Society for Neuroadaptive Technology (SNAT) and to support the communication between this society and BCI researchers. Dr. Thorsten O. Zander will present and discuss the aims of passive BCI research, Neuroadaptive Technology and modern Human‐Computer Interaction. This part represents a forum to identify synergies and develop new ideas. Dr. David Medine and Ratko Petrovic, will present technological developments for passive and hybrid BCIs. Dr. Medine will present the Lab Streaming Layer (LSL), an open‐source software project for synchronized, multi‐modal data streaming and recording. Mr. Petrovic will present recent hardware developments compatible with LSL. The third part is a hands‐on demonstration with Neuroadaptive Technologies. In several groups,participants use an application combining passive BCI, gaze control and dry electrodes.

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Studying the Human Cerebral Cortex with Cortical Explorer

Cortical Viewer is a web-based, interactive, 3D viewer for exploring the brain cortex developed at Imperial College.

The viewer allows users to interactively explore the HCP’s Multi-modal Parcellation. Clicking on different regions brings up access to a wealth of meta-data summarising directly the extensive neuroanatomical supplementary results. ‘Sections’ refers to which broad neuroanatomical sections of the brain the region belongs to, where these sections reference how the brain was subdivided up during manual annotation.

The explorer offers several different schemes for viewing the data, for example the regions connected (or in a common section) to the primary motor cortex can be viewed either by exploding (moving) the areas, or recolouring (to fade out unrelated regions).

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NeuroMore - No more free licenses

The Neuromore BCI tool seems to stop it's free license. Now the subscription options are $50/month or $420/year. Like Matlab or LabVIEW it will be a good ideia to have a low cost or free (restricted) editions for developers, academics, etc. Let´s wait and see what happens.

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The Virtual Brain - Download Free

The Virtual Brain software (TVB) is a computational framework for the virtualization of brain structure and function. This is accomplished by simulating network dynamics using biologically realistic large-scale connectivity.

TVB merges structural information on individual brains including 3D geometry of neocortex, white matter connectivity, etc. and then simulates the emergent brain dynamics. The logic of TVB is the following:

• Structural information provides certain constraints on the type of network dynamics that may emerge.
• While these constraints limit arbitrary brain dynamics, structural connectivity provides the foundation on top of which a dynamic repertoire of functional configurations can emerge.
• When brain structure is changed, as maturation, aging, or from damage or disease, then the brain’s dynamic repertoire changes.

TVB allows the systematic investigation of the dynamic repertoire as a function of structure. It moves away from the investigation of isolated regional responses and considers the function of each region in terms of the interplay among brain regions.

This allows us to

• Re-classify lesions in terms of the network of nodes (regions) and connections (axons, white matter tracts) that have been damaged and to
• Investigate the mechanisms that preserve function by understanding how regional damage affects the function of other parts of the network.

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Grasping Objects with your Brain using a EEG RSVP- driven grasp pipeline

Brain-Computer Interfaces are promising technologies that can improve Human-Robot Interaction, especially for disabled and impaired individuals. Noninvasive BCI’s, which are very desirable from a medical and therapeutic perspective, are only able to deliver noisy, low-bandwidth signals, making their use in complex tasks difficult. To this end, we present a shared control online grasp planning framework using an advanced EEG-based interface. 

These results are encouraging, and demonstrate that a relatively fast and effective pipeline based off of only EEG data is workable. The experiment revealed some issues, specifically in terms of how images are generated when representing abstract concepts.

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Increasing the capacity of advanced neural interfaces to engage more than one million neurons in parallel

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through its Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program is working on Brain-Computer Interfaces and  seeks to translate neurochemical signals into binary code (MedCityNews).

The NESD program looks ahead to a future in which advanced neural devices offer improved fidelity, resolution, and precision sensory interface for therapeutic applications. By increasing the capacity of advanced neural interfaces to engage more than one million neurons in parallel, NESD aims to enable rich two-way communication with the brain at a scale that will help deepen our understanding of that organ’s underlying biology, complexity, and function.

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CEBL3: A New Software Platform for EEG Analysis and Rapid Prototyping of BCI Technologies

We are still waiting for the version 3 of the Colorado Electroencephalography and Brain-Computer Interfaces Laboratory. The CEBL3 it will be a new software platform, presented at 6th International BCI2016 meeting, written in Python, that is designed to support all phases of BCI research and development. 

A major design goal of CEBL3 is to allow researchers to rapidly progress novel ideas from the early experimental and analysis stages to fully functional BCI prototypes. Current BCI software packages are typically designed with one of two primary goals: offline analysis or performing interactive experiments. 

For instance, EEGLAB and BCILAB are written primarily in MATLAB and easily permit exploratory analysis using standard or custom methods. However, they are not equipped with an extensive framework for developing new user interfaces or performing real-time experiments. On the other hand, software packages like BCI2000 and OpenVibe are well-suited for performing interactive experiments. However, they are written in C++ and require significant time and effort to implement new methods. The goal of CEBL3 is to bridge this gap by providing a single BCI software platform that supports all stages of BCI development in a flexible, feature-rich and high-performance environment. 

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Brain Morphometry Tool

Mindboggle is an open-source for brain morphometry analyzing tissue segmentation, cortical and subcortical parcellation, volumetry and cortical thickness. 

Mindboggle can be run on a previously uploaded input T1 dataset. This pipeline will automatically start in parallel the necessary. 

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Microsoft is looking for a "Corporate Strategy and Development Manager" with experience in BCI

BCI-based systems, with all the technological potential it presents, starts to have a demand in the labor market as this case of this job offer for Microsoft.

Required Qualifications

• 1+ years of consulting firm experience in strategy and/or technology
• Passion for technology, and ability to understand and stay current on industry trends, internal product development efforts, and competitive landscape (top competitors, startups, emerging segments, etc.).
• (...)

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical expertise in one or more of the following: Software development, Cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence, Next-generation interfaces (e.g. conversational platforms, mixed reality), Breakthrough technologies (e.g. quantum computing, brain-computer interface), or other emerging technology areas
• (...)

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