BRAIN4HELP

Goals of the project

The main goal of this project is to develop a non-invasive brain interface based on evoked EEG signals, which allows a person with cerebral and/or severe spinal damage to express their basic needs. For this purpose a user interface will be design to present the symbols that represent certain basic needs (hunger, thirst, pain, etc.), emotional states (happiness, sadness, anger, etc.) and basic phrases (yes, no, I like it, thanks, etc.). Thus, the users should fix their gaze in the symbol that represents what they want to express and the system will be able to detect it. Finally, the option selected by the users is displayed on the screen and through audio from a speaker, so the people around them know their needs.

It must be highlighted that, although non-invasive brain interfaces are implemented based on evoked potentials for different applications, most of these interfaces have not been developed for patients with brain and/or severe spinal damage. In these cases, the characteristics of each patient (damaged brain area, use of respirators that affect quality of recorded EEG signals, to focus attention problems, etc.) make it necessary to particularize, for each case, the procedure of register, processing and classification of the EEG signals.

Specific goals

To achieve the general goal of the project it is necessary to achieve the following specific goals:

• Developing the EEG signal acquisition system. This system will be responsible for obtaining, using electrodes placed on the scalp, the EEG signals. The electrode configuration must be established (electrode number and location) so that it is possible to detect evoked potentials. The types of evoked potentials employed should also be determined .
• Processsing and classifying the EEG signals in order to detect when a stimulus has been attended or not. To do this, an algorithm to extract the main features of the EEG signals and a classifier to determine whether the stimulus was attended or not according to the features vector of EEG signals should be obtained.
• Developing a visual interface that displays, through several icons, different basic needs, emotional states and basic phrases. For the visual interface designed it will be taken into account the needs expressed by people with brain and/or severe spinal damage and their relatives. The interface will generate the visual stimuli required to determine the option selected by the person.
• Evaluating the system with people with brain and / or severe spinal damage.