Designing an Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic System for Handling Uncertainty Effects in Brain–Computer Interface Classification of Motor Imagery Induced EEG Patterns

One of the urgent challenges in the automated analysis and interpretation of electrical brain activity is the effective handling of uncertainties associated with the complexity and variability of brain dynamics, reflected in the nonstationary nature of brain signals such as electroencephalogram (EEG). This poses a severe problem for existing approaches to the classification task within brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. Recently emerged type-2 fuzzy logic (T2FL) methodology has shown a remarkable potential in dealing with uncertain information given limited insight into the nature of the data-generating mechanism. The objective of this work is, thus, to examine the applicability of the T2FL approach to the problem of EEG pattern recognition. In particular, the focus is two-fold: 1) the design methodology for the interval T2FL system (IT2FLS) that can robustly deal with intersession as well as within-session manifestations of nonstationary spectral EEG correlates of motor imagery, and 2) the comprehensive examination of the proposed fuzzy classifier in both off-line and on-line EEG classification case studies. The on-line evaluation of the IT2FLS-controlled real-time neurofeedback over multiple recording sessions holds special importance for EEG-based BCI technology. In addition, a retrospective comparative analysis accounting for other popular BCI classifiers such as linear discriminant analysis, kernel Fisher discriminant, and support vector machines as well as a conventional type-1 FLS, simulated off-line on the recorded EEGs, has demonstrated the enhanced potential of the proposed IT2FLS approach to robustly handle uncertainty effects in BCI classification.