The effect of distinct mental strategies on classification performance for brain–computer interfaces

Motor imagery is the task most commonly used to induce changes in electroencephalographic (EEG) signals for mental imagery-based brain computer interfacing (BCI). In this study, we investigated EEG patterns that were induced by seven different mental tasks (i.e. mental rotation, word association, auditory imagery, mental subtraction, spatial navigation, imagery of familiar faces and motor imagery) and evaluated the binary classification performance. The aim was to provide a broad range of reliable and user-appropriate tasks to make individual optimization of BCI control strategies possible. Nine users participated in four sessions of multi-channel EEG recordings. Mental tasks resulting most frequently in good binary classification performance include mental subtraction, word association, motor imagery and mental rotation. Our results indicate that a combination of ‘brain-teasers’ – tasks that require problem specific mental work (e.g. mental subtraction, word association) – and dynamic imagery tasks (e.g. motor imagery) result in highly distinguishable brain patterns that lead to an increased performance.

► User-appropriate control strategies can enhance individual performance and comfort.
► Combinations of brain-teasers and dynamic imagery tasks result in best performance.
► Brain patterns are stable over time and support classification results.