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Abstract
Purpose: Near-infrared spectroscopy brain–computer interfaces (NIRS-BCIs) have been proposed as potential motor-free communication pathways. This paper documents the challenges of implementing an NIRS-BCI with a non-verbal, severely and congenitally impaired, but cognitively intact young adult. Methods: A 5-session personalized mental task NIRS-BCI training paradigm was invoked, whereby participant-specific mental tasks were selected either by the researcher or by the user, on the basis of prior performance or user preference. Results: Although the personalized mental task selection and training framework had been previously demonstrated with able-bodied participants, the participant was not able to exceed chance-level accuracies. Challenges to the acquisition of BCI control may have included disinclination to BCI training, structural or functional brain atypicalities, heightened emotional arousal and confounding haemodynamic patterns associated with novelty and reward processing. Conclusions: Overall, we stress the necessity for further clinical NIRS-BCI research involving non-verbal individuals with severe motor impairments.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all of the members of the PRISM Lab, specifically, Ka Lun Tam for his technical help with this project, and Amanda Fleury for her help with the headband. We would also like to thank Dr. Kaori Takehara-Nishiuchi for her help and guidance. Finally, we would like to thank Holland Bloorview Research Institute, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), NSERC Create: Care, and University of Toronto Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering for their support.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts.