Thought identification through visual stimuli presentation from a commercially available EEG device

Abstract

Thought identification has been the ultimate goal of brain-computer interface systems. However, due to the complex nature of brain signals, classification is difficult. But recent developments in deep learning have made the classification of multivariate time series data relatively easy. Studies have been carried out in the recent past to classify thoughts based on signals from medical-grade EEG devices. This study explores the possibility of thought identification using a commercially available EEG device using deep learning techniques. The crucial part of any EEG experiment is contamination-free data collection. Keeping the subject’s mind concentrated only in the decided state is important, yet challenging. To address this issue, we have developed a graphical user interface (GUI) based program that allows stimulus controlling and data recording. With the use of the low-cost commercially available EEG device, accuracies up to 89% were achieved for the classification of high contrast signals. However, tests on complex thought identification did not produce statistically significant results over the chance accuracy.