Spatial auditory BCI paradigm utilizing N200 and P300 responses

The paper presents our recent results obtained with a new auditory spatial localization based BCI paradigm in which the ERP shape differences at early latencies are employed to enhance the traditional P300 responses in an oddball experimental setting. The concept relies on the recent results in auditory neuroscience showing a possibility to differentiate early anterior contralateral responses to attended spatial sources. Contemporary stimuli-driven BCI paradigms benefit mostly from the P300 ERP latencies in so called “aha-response” settings. We show the further enhancement of the classification results in spatial auditory paradigms by incorporating the N200 latencies, which differentiate the brain responses to lateral, in relation to the subject head, sound locations in the auditory space. The results reveal that those early spatial auditory ERPs boost online classification results of the BCI application. The online BCI experiments with the multi-command BCI prototype support our research hypothesis with the higher classification results and the improved information-transfer-rates.