Research on Hand-Oriented Tactile Evoked Brain-Computer Interface Rehabilitation Method

In recent years, the incidence of stroke has increased due to the growing issue of aging, significantly affecting the quality of life of patients. Functional hand rehabilitation is one of the common symptoms. However, in most cases, mechanical repetitive rehabilitation methods are used clinically, lacking patient's autonomous intention and effort. Brain-computer interface (BCI) can be used as a solution to overcome such problems by proposing a hand rehabilitation protocol utilizing vibration stimulation induced P300-BCI. Firstly, the vibration stimulation module was designed to be placed at the fingertip, with the amplitude adjusted to solve the problems of patient fatigue and low tactile sensation during the experiment. Secondly, the optimal channel was selected using the P300 characteristics evoked by different stimuli, and the classification accuracy was improved to more than 80% by cross-subject differences. Finally, the soft actuator chamber air pressure and bending angle are analyzed to establish the soft braking P300-BCI online system. Experimental results indicate that the actuator to a soft robotic hand based on BCI is valid in rehabilitation. This work can further promote neuroplasticity of patients and achieve closed-loop neuromotor rehabilitation for the in-loop population.