Articles from the Seventh International Brain-Computer Interface Meeting

KEYWORDS:

• Editorial
• brain-computer interface
• brain-machine interface

The field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs, also known as brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) continues to be an area of rapid growth and development, attracting widespread interest both from the research community and the general public. This special issue presents papers on topics presented at the Seventh International Brain-Computer Interface Meeting, which was held 21–25 May 2018 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, USA. This Meeting marked a transition in the BCI Meeting series from a triennial Meeting schedule to a biennial schedule. Past BCI Meetings had been held in 1999 [1], 2002 [2], 2005 [3], 2010 [4], 2013 [5], and 2016 [6].

The Seventh International BCI Meeting continues a trend of reduced reliance on grant funding, albeit with generous support of student attendance by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The Seventh International BCI Meeting kept its distinctive and valuable retreat format, with shared meals to encourage interaction between collaborators and 25 workshops to promote interaction on particular topics in the BCI field. The 432 delegates came from 28 countries and represented 221 research groups or organizations. These delegates were approximately 37% students, 13% postdocs, 15% early career, 25% established researchers, and 10% other. The 227-page abstract book is freely available on the BCI Society webpage [7]. Its peer-reviewed abstracts provide valuable summaries of the myriad advances in BCI research. The program book for the Seventh International BCI Meeting is also available [8]. An innovation in the 2018 BCI Meeting were Master’s Classes to provide early stage researchers with feedback on proposed projects from experience BCI researchers.

Overall, the Seventh International BCI Meeting brought together experts from around the world to concentrate on a theme of ‘Not Getting Lost In Translation.’ This theme called attention to the challenges that might hinder the translation of BCI research and development and called for collaborative efforts to transition laboratory success into practical devices for use in everyday life, whether by people with disabilities or the general public. In particular, an Industry Session joined the Panel of Funding Officers to provide attendees with insights into resources for research and development to move BCIs toward commercialization. As BCIs move closer to translation, ethical issues are of paramount importance. Therefore, a neuroethics session provided a forum in which to discuss ethical issues unique to BCIs.

This special issue of papers from the Seventh International BCI Meeting includes a diverse set of articles.

Weiss et al. [p. 103–114] present an intracortical BCI for cursor control that is not only high-performing, but also portable, which enabled experiments in a laboratory setting and in the home. In addition to formal laboratory testing, the participant was also able to use the BCI for free-form tasks such as gaming and drawing. Such studies are vital to move BCIs along the translational pathway and create practical, usable devices.

Also working in cursor control, but with EEG, Mousavia and Sa present a study on the detection and analysis of feedback-related brain activity and its implications for both active and passive BCI for cursor control.

Sereshkeh et al. [p. 125–137] describe a hybrid BCI combining functional near-infrared and EEG to interpret imagined speech. The interpretation of intended speech without requiring the presentation of stimuli is one of the ultimate goals of BCI research. The noninvasive approach presented here can only differentiate among three states (yes/no/rest), and with modest accuracy. Yet, there are practical applications and people for whom such technology would dramatically improve their quality-of-life. Differentiating intended communication from rest alone is a vital performance factor for practical use.

Thompson, et al. [p. 138–145] describe a study on the potential harm to event-related potential BCIs from automatic artifact rejection algorithms. They compare multiple algorithms used for artifact rejection and identify both their impact on BCI performance and possible mechanisms that cause performance reductions.

Koçanaogulları et al. [p. 146–158] describe a fascinating update to the stimuli presentation for event-related potential BCIs for typing. Building on a rigorous theoretical foundation, they present methods for dynamically determining which stimuli to present to the user and for determining when sufficient information is available for a reliable decision.

Krumpe et al. [p. 159–174] use an old-new memory recognition task to study whether EEG correlates can be used to identify decision confidence. Their study improves the foundation of understanding of EEG content upon which BCI applications should be built.

The 2018 BCI Meeting workshop entitled ‘Turning negative into positives! Exploiting negative results in Brain-Machine Interface research’ is described by Lotte, Jeunet, Chavarriaga, and Bougrain, et al. In this paper they explore the challenges of negative results and the importance to the BCI field of disseminating them. They provide practical suggestions for ensuring that even negative results, which do not meet our expectations, are publishable and beneficial to the BCI field.

The BCI Meeting series has impacted BCI research beyond the papers that are compiled into each Meeting’s special issue. Earlier issues of this journal have already included several papers [9–11] from the 2018 BCI Meeting and a few will be published in upcoming issues. The most recent issue included the lengthy paper summarizing the 25 workshops of the 2018 BCI Meeting [9]. The 500-word summaries of each workshop contained in this paper create a convenient introduction to the breadth of topics included in BCI research and the challenges faced as the field attempts to move BCIs from the laboratory into real-world use. Eddy et al [10] analyzed descriptions of BCI experiment participants as presented in the BCI Meetings from 1999 to 2016 to identify trends in the involvement of participants with disabilities. And Borhani et al. examined selective attention during BCI use with brain connectivity analysis [11].

The Eighth International BCI Meeting will be held 8–11 June 2020 at Dolce La Hulpe, Sonian Forest, Brussels, Belgium. This upcoming Meeting will be the first held outside the United States. The distinctive traits of the BCI Meeting series have been retained, however. The upcoming Eighth International BCI Meeting should again be an opportunity to interact both in formal and informal settings with BCI researchers and interested parties from around the globe, building collaborations and connections to inform and accelerate the BCI field.

Acknowlegement

The authors would like to acknowledge support for the Seventh International Brain-Computer Interface Meeting through grant R13DC016830 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke within the National Institutes of Health; and a grant from the National Science Foundation. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and not the funding institutes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders [R13DC016830].