Comparison between a Passive and Active response task and their effect on the Amplitude and Latency of the P300 component for Visual Stimuli while using Low Fidelity Equipment

In this paper, we investigate the effect, in terms of amplitude and latency, of the P300 component in a separate active and passive task response condition. This work is based on the P300 speller BCI (oddball) paradigm and the xDAWN algorithm, with five healthy subjects; while using a noninvasive Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) based on low fidelity electroencephalographic (EEG) equipment. Our results suggest that an active task yielded a larger P300 peak amplitude while there was no discriminable difference in the peak latency. The signal was also morphological consistent in both scenarios, even though they did not yield identical P300 components. This groundwork yields imperative data for future work where we plan to introduce several distractions, including communication with the user while performing the P300 speller paradigm.