The impact of distractions on intracortical brain–computer interface control of a robotic arm

ABSTRACT

The objective of the study was to evaluate the impact of distractions on intracortical brain–computer interface (BCI) performance. Two individuals with tetraplegia had microelectrode arrays implanted into their motor cortex. Each used a BCI to move a robotic arm between two targets as quickly as possible, performed alone and with distractions. Performance outcomes were similar across conditions, except for a drop in the median path efficiency in the motor action distraction for Subject P2 (p = 0.033, Mann–Whitney U-test). Other distraction conditions resulted in intermittent impairments in performance, but were not statistically different from the no distraction condition. Both subjects rated the overall difficulty of the task with and without distractions as low. Consistent levels of BCI performance were mirrored by small differences in neural firing rates across conditions, demonstrating that experienced BCI users can maintain performance on a simple reaching task under these various conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Brain–computer interfaces
• brain–machine interface
• tetraplegia
• motor cortex
• spinal cord injuries

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the study participants and their families for their cooperation and effort throughout the duration of the study. We would also like to extend a special thanks to Gina McKernan for her assistance with statistical analyses, Brian Dekleva for helpful discussions regarding the neural analysis, and Lynne Yash for assistance with photo editing.

Disclosure statement

This material was presented as a poster at the AAPM&R Annual Assembly in San Antonio, Texas to conference attendees in November 2019. This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) under Contract No. N66001-16-C-4051 and the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program under Contract No. N66001-10-C-4056. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of DARPA, SSC Pacific, or the United States Government. The material and effort contributed by AJH is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 1,747,452. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the National Science Foundation. There are no other relevant financial conflicts of interest to report outside the current work.

Abbreviations: Brain–computer interface (BCI), electroencephalography (EEG), electrocorticography (ECoG), root-mean-square voltage (RMS), optimal linear estimation (OLE), virtual reality (VR), interquartile range (IQR).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [N66001-16-C-4051]; National Science Foundation [1747452].