The bciovereeg blog has ended its activity

Due to the change of my research area, 

the supply of content for BCI-over-EEG has ceased. 

Thank you to all subscribers and readers of this Blog. 

Independent Studies - EMOTIV

The scientific study "Brain-Computer Interfaces by Electrical Cortex Activity: Challenges in Creating a Cognitive System for Mobile Devices Using Steady-State Visually Evoked Potentials" is referenced on the EMOTIV company website.

The independent study presents the BCI results obtained by reading the concentration state and SSVEP using an EPOC+ equipment.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Work in Progress

Final stage of PhD writing...
I hope to be back soon with more news about BCI/EEG.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Latest Research and Reviews about Brain-Computer Interfaces

If you are looking for the latest research and reviews about BCI/BMI this site can be one of the best options offering you many results being almost of them with public access.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Top 25 Brain-Computer Interfaces Solutions

With the uninterrupted advancement of technology, BCIs also come up with new solutions that are increasingly available outside laboratories or hospital environments. The company Pantech Solutions has a recent article dedicated to this subject. As a few examples we have:

• Brain Controlled Wheel Chair;
• Brain Keyboard;
• Drowsy Driver Detection; 
• Emotion Recognition;
• Brainwaves for Neuromarketing;  
• Brain Controlled Automatic Braking System;  
• Meditation Stoplight.

Press here to read the Top 25 BCI Projects 2018 published by the Pantech Solutions.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

BCI and Neurotechnology - gTEC solutions

As most readers of this blog knows, gTEC is an Austrian company dedicated for several years to the BCI research. At present it has a very wide catalog of EEG equipment as well as signal processing software. As a user of these company solutions and also in the support that I have always obtained from the technical team I consider gTEC an excellent investment option in BCI research area.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Carnegie Mellon Forum on Biomedical Engineering

The Carnegie Mellon Forum on Biomedical Engineering, to be held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on September 21, 2018, will provide a platform for discussions and identification of grand challenges and frontiers in biomedical engineering research, education, and translation.

PROGRAM

• Microphysiological Models that Rely on Emergence in Multi-Cellular Engineered Living Systems;
• World’s Deepest-Penetration and Fastest Cameras: Photoacoustic Tomography and Compressed Ultrafast Photography;
• Challenges and Trends in Medical Robotics;
• Driving and Reshaping Biotechnology;
• Tackling Grand Challenges in Precision Medicine Through Biomedical Engineering;
• Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Advanced Imaging and Precision Medicine;
• Challenges in Translating BME Technologies;
• Challenges in BME Education;
• CMU Approach to Addressing BME Challenges;
• Plenary Panel Discussion;
• Poster Session.

The forum will consist of keynote and plenary talks, plenary panel discussions, and poster presentations in the frontiers of biomedical engineering. A poster award competition will be open to students, postdocs or residents who present their research in any area interfacing engineering with medicine and health. Selected oral and poster presentations will be invited for submission to a special issue in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. Faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, postdocs, residents, clinicians and industrial practitioners, within and outside of CMU, are all cordially invited.

For more information abou t BCI/EEG press here.

Where is the Consciousness Brain Region?

Elisa Clement published a new article in the AR Magazine from Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon - Portugal. 

Most scholars consider consciousness to have two components: wakefulness and awareness. Wakefulness is fairly easy to define and measure experimentally, through EEG, because the pattern of activity shown by EEG is different in brains of awake subjects, compared to subjects who are asleep.

www.gregadunn.com

Awareness, on the other hand, is neither easy to assess, nor to define – what exactly does it mean to be “aware” of your surroundings? Are there different stages or levels of awareness? Are there any other more accurate and objective ways of assessing awareness other than through questionnaires filled in by subjects, which is how it is often assessed?

But the most crucial and interesting question yet to be answered is the following: is consciousness generated through the orchestrated activation of multiple brain areas, or is there one particular area responsible for it?

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Swiss Government Excellence Scholarships

An interesting opportunity for research scholarship starting at 2019 is available to post-graduate researchers that are planning to go to Switzerland to do research at doctoral or post-doctoral level. Only candidates nominated by an academic mentor will be considered and must be born after 1982.

Each year the Swiss Confederation awards Government Excellence Scholarships to promote international exchange and research cooperation between Switzerland and over 180 other countries. Recipients are selected by the awarding body, the Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students (FCS).

The University of Geneva that includes the BCI groups "Electrical Neuroimaging Group" and "Affective Computing and Multimodal Interaction Group" is one of the selected educational institutions.

Additional allowances:

• The scholarship amounts to a monthly payment of CHF 1,920;
• Scholarship holders from outside continental Europe receive a flight allowance (lump sum) for a ticket back to their country of origin (provided at the end of the scholarship);
• Special CHF 300 housing allowance (paid once at the beginning of the scholarship).

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Learning with BCIs - from Prof. Aaron Batista

A very interesting 30 minutes presentation about BCI / Machine Learning and NeuroScience explained by Professor Aaron Batista.

When we learn, the brain changes at nearly every level of organization. Synapses form and strengthen, individual neurons change their tuning properties, and cortical maps expand. My research examines how learning alters the coordinated activity of populations of neurons. This is a particularly important level at which to study learning because it is the action of populations of neurons that drive behavior, generate perceptions, and undergird our cognition.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

3 BCI Jobs - Inria Bordeaux Sud Ouest

3 New BCI vacancies are available to start in September / October 2018:

• Computational Modeling of Mental Imagery-based BCI user training - PhD position;
• Redefining EEG Signal Processing and Machine Learning to ensure efficient Mental Imagery-based BCI user training - Post-doc position;
• R&D Engineer position to implement brain signal processing tools and BCI applications in the OpenViBE software platform - Engineer position. 

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Poster and Exhibitor Demonstrations at 7th International BCI Meeting

In the 7th International BCI meeting at Asilomar, California - USA, many papers presentations took place during the congress. This PDF provided by BCI Society, with more than 200 pages, describes a resume of each poster and exhibitor demonstrations divided by the following themes:

• BCI Implant- Control / Other;
• BCI Non-Invasive- Control / Other;
• Signal Acquisition / Analysis;
• User Aspect: Experience and Ethics.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

EPOC Flex - The new EEG device from Emotiv

EMOTIV company has a new EEG device available for $2100. The EPOC Flex as 32 channels (+ 2 references), CMS/DRL configurable in any 10-20 location or on ears, 1024 internal downsampled to 128 SPS, realtime CQ monitor (patented), 0.16 – 43Hz, 16 bit per channel, 0.51μV @ 16 bit,  ±4.17 mV, sintered silver-silver chloride, 9 axis sensor, proprietary 2.4GHz wireless and li-poly battery, 680 mAh up to 9 hours.

EPOC Flex combines the award-winning wireless technology of our EPOC+ headset with the flexibility and high density afforded by more traditional EEG head cap systems. EPOC Flex is a wireless control box that works alongside the EasyCap system. It can be configured to record from any of the standard 10-20 EEG positions for up to 32 channels.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Highly Interactive BCI based on Flicker-Free SSVEP

Visual evoked potential-based brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) have been widely investigated because of their easy system configuration and high information transfer rate (ITR). However, the uncomfortable flicker or brightness modulation of existing methods restricts the practical interactivity of BCI applications. In our study, a flicker-free steady-state motion visual evoked potential (FF-SSMVEP)-based BCI was proposed. Ring-shaped motion checkerboard patterns with oscillating expansion and contraction motions were presented by a high-refresh-rate display for visual stimuli, and the brightness of the stimuli was kept constant. 

Compared with SSVEPs, few harmonic responses were elicited by FF-SSMVEPs, and the frequency energy of SSMVEPs was concentrative. These FF-SSMVEPs evoked “single fundamental peak” responses after signal processing without harmonic and subharmonic peaks. More stimulation frequencies could thus be selected to elicit more responding fundamental peaks without overlap with harmonic peaks. A 40-target online SSMVEP-based BCI system was achieved that provided an ITR up to 1.52 bits per second (91.2 bits/min), and user training was not required to use this system. This study also demonstrated that the FF-SSMVEP-based BCI system has low contrast and low visual fatigue, offering a better alternative to conventional SSVEP-based BCIs.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

"BCI: Two Concurrent Learning Problems" by Maureen Clerc

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) are systems which provide real-time interaction through brain activity, bypassing traditional interfaces such as keyboard or mouse. A target application of BCI is to restore mobility or autonomy to severely disabled patients. In BCI, new modes of perception and interaction come into play, which users must learn, just as infants learn to explore their sensorimotor system. Feedback is central in this learning. From the point of view of the system, features must be extracted from the brain activity, and translated into commands. (...) It is for instance possible to monitor the brain's reaction to the BCI outcome. In this talk I will present some of the current machine learning methods which are used in BCI, and the adaptation of BCI to users' needs.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

BCI and EEG Projects in European Commission

It is the European Commission's primary public repository and portal to disseminate information on all EU-funded research projects and their results in the broadest sense. The website and repository include all public information held by the Commission (project factsheets, publishable reports and deliverables), editorial content to support communication and exploitation (news, events, success stories, magazines, multilingual "results in brief" for the broader public) and comprehensive links to external sources such as open access publications and websites.

If you want to know all the European Research Projects about a specified area, as "BCI" or "EEG", you can use the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS). 
For example, to get all the results containning BCI, written in english, from September, 1 - 2017, type in the search field "('BCI') AND language='en' AND contentUpdateDate>=2017-09-01" or just use the "advanced search" option.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

PhyCS 2018 - 5th International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems

PhyCS is the annual meeting of the physiological interaction and computing community, and serves as the main international forum for engineers, computer scientists and health professionals, interested in outstanding research and development that bridges the gap between physiological data handling and human-computer interaction. 

PhyCS brings together people interested in creating novel interaction devices, adaptable interfaces, algorithms and tools, through the study, planning, and design of interfaces between people and computers that are supported by multimodal biosignals. 

TOPIC AREAS:

DEVICES

• Biomedical Devices for Computer Interaction
• Brain-computer Interfaces
• Wearable Sensors and Systems
• Cybernetics and User Interface Technologies
• (...)

METHODOLOGIES AND METHODS

• Biosignal Acquisition, Analysis and Processing
• Simulation of Physiological Processes
• Pattern Recognition
• Neural Networks
• (...)

HUMAN FACTORS

• User Experience
• Usability
• Adaptive Interfaces
• Human Factors in Physiological Computing
• (...)

APPLICATIONS

• Physiology-driven Computer Interaction
• Biofeedback Technologies
• Assistive Technologies
• Physiological Computing in Mobile Devices
• (...)

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

 

Artificial Intelligence + Machine Learning = Deep Learning EEG

How can we apply AI and Machine Learning to EEG data? There is evidence that EEG characteristics can be used as an indication (a biomarker) of some diseases. For example, in a project funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation, our findings indicate that there are significant differences in the EEG data of different RBD patients compared to healthy populations. More specifically, RBD subjects as a group had larger power in the frontal EEG electrodes than healthy subjects. Again taken as a group. Therefore, there is statistical significance in the difference between one group and the other. 

However, if we want to use this as a means for diagnosis, we need to take into account that diagnostic decisions are made on individuals, not on groups. For this to happen we need a decision system. We would input the data of a particular individual subject. Then we would get an answer on whether this individual is likely to develop, for instance, a neurodegenerative disease. Here is where Machine Learning and Deep Learning come into play.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Open Database of Live Human Brain Cells

The Allen Institute for Brain Science has added the first data from human nerve cells to the Allen Cell Types Database: a publicly available tool for researchers to explore and understand the building blocks of the human brain. This first release includes electrical properties from approximately 300 living cortical neurons of different types derived from 36 patients, with accompanying 3D reconstructions of their shape or anatomy for 100 cells, and computer models simulating the electrical behavior of these neurons. 

The database will also contain gene expression profiles, based on measurements of all genes used by 16,000 individual cells, from three adult human brains. Data from these human cells provide an unparalleled window into the intricate components, circuitry and function of the human neocortex, including features that make our brains unique.

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.

Workshops Schedule - 7th International BCI Meeting, 2018

The 7th International BCI Meeting: “BCIs: Not Getting Lost in Translation”, is scheduled for May 21 – 25, 2018 at the Asilomar, California, USA.

SESSION 1- WEDNESDAY, MAY 23 (9:00-12:00)

• BCIs for stroke rehabilitation­­­
• Progress in Decoding Speech processes using intracranial signals
• Noninvasive BCI-control of FES for grasp restoration in high spinal cord injured humans
• Collaborative and Competing Multi-Brain BCI’s
• ECoG based BCIs
• Examining Ethical Assumptions About Neural Engineering and BCI Development
• Towards the Elusive Killer App for BCIs
• User-Centered Design in BCI development; A Broad Perspective
• ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Lower-limb brain-machine interfaces and their applications 

SESSION 2- THURSDAY, MAY 24 (9:00-12:00)

• BCIs for assessment of locked-in and DOC patients
• Turning negative into positives! Exploiting “negative” results in BCI research
• ­­­­­­­­Eye Tracking, Vision, and BCI
• Natural Language Processing & BCI
• ­­­­­­­­BCI and Augmented/Virtual Reality
• ­Recent Developments in Non-Invasive EEG SensorTechnology
• Making use of the future of BCI implant technology
• Clinical Applications of Brain-Computer Interfaces in Neurorehabilitation

SESSION 3- THURSDAY, MAY 24 (13:15-16:15)

• ECoG for control and mapping
• Real-time BCI communication for non-verbal individuals with cerebral palsy
• Tools for establishing neuroadaptive technology through passive BCIs
• Neurofeedback during Artistic Expression as Therapy
• Unsupervised Learning for BCIs
• Perception of Sensation Restored through Neural Interfaces
• From the lab into the wild: shaping methods and technologies for large-scale BCI research
• Standards for Neurotechnologies and Brain-Machine Interfacing

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.