An Investigation on Non-Invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces: Emotiv Epoc+ Neuroheadset and Its Effectiveness

Neurotechnology describes as one of the focal points of today’s research of hundreds of academicians and researchers globally; particularly around the domain of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) that was introduced in the 1970s and has been at the forefront of many neurotechnological discoveries. The primary attempts of BCI research are to decoding human speech from brain signals, implementing creativity by imagination, and controlling neuro-psychological patterns by utilizing billion of neural activities that would significantly benefit people suffering from neurological disorders. In this study, we illustrate the progress of BCI research and present scores of unveiled contemporary approaches. First, we explore a decoding natural speech approach that is designed to decode human speech directly from the human brain onto a digital screen introduced by Facebook Reality Lab and University of California San Francisco. Then, we study a recently presented visionary project to control the human brain using Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) approach. We also investigate well-known electroencephalography (EEG) based Emotiv Epoc+ Neuroheadset to identify six emotional parameters including engagement, excitement, focus, stress, relaxation, and interest using brain signals by experimenting the neuroheadset among three human subjects where we utilize two two supervised learning classifiers, Naïve Bayes and Linear Regression to show the accuracy and competency of the Epoc+ device and its associated applications in neurotechnological research. We present experimental studies and the demonstration indicates 69 % and 62 % improved accuracy for the aforementioned classifiers respectively in reading the performance matrices of the participants. We envision that non-invasive, insertable, and low-cost BCI approaches shall be the focal point for not only an alternative for patients with physical paralysis but also understanding the brain that would pave us to access and control the memories and brain somewhere very near.