Classification of tactile event-related potential elicited by Braille display for brain-computer interface

To construct brain-computer interface (BCI), an event-related potential (ERP) induced by a tactile stimulus is investigated in this paper. For ERP-based BCI, visual or auditory information is frequently used as the stimulus. In the present study, we focus on tactile sensations to reserve their visual and auditory senses for other activities. Several patterns of mechanical tactile stimulation were applied to the index fingers of both hands using two piezo actuators that were used as a braille display. Human experiments based on the oddball paradigm were carried out. Subjects were instructed to pay attention to unusual target stimuli while avoiding other frequent non-target stimuli. The extracted features were classified by applying stepwise linear discriminant analysis. As a result, an accuracy of 85% and 60% were obtained for 2- and 4-class classification, respectively. The accuracy was improved by increasing the number of electrodes even when short stimulus intervals were used.