The 8^th international brain-computer interface meeting, BCIs: the next frontier

For the first time, the International Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Meeting was held virtually in June 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we were sorry to miss out on all the benefits of an in-person meeting, the conference organizers were grateful to be able to bring the BCI community together to share research updates and connect with colleagues. The virtual format allowed 395 delegates from 38 countries to participate in the 2021 BCI Meeting. Approximately 175 of the attendees were students or post-docs. The 2021 International BCI Meeting was the 8^th meeting in a series that had previously met in 1999 [1], 2002 [2], 2005 [3], 2010 [4], 2013 [5], 2016 [6], and 2018 [7].

The 2021 virtual BCI Meeting adhered to the traditional format of three full days of scientific content and interaction. With a theme of ‘BCIs: The Next Frontier’, the 2021 meeting featured keynote speakers who are conducting research in emerging areas of BCI technology. Dr. Robert Gaunt from the University of Pittsburgh spoke about Bidirectional brain-computer interfaces. Dr. Sebastian Halder from the University of Essex gave the 2020 Early Career Award Lecture titled, Toward brain signal based communication in complete paralysis. Dr. Steven Laureys from the University of Liège presented on BCIs for consciousness assessment and communication in brain-injured patients. Dr. Maryam Shanechi from the University of Southern California gave a talk about A new generation of brain-machine interfaces: from motor to mood. Finally, Dr. Paul Sajda from Columbia University spoke about Closed-loop noninvasive BCIs: From performance augmentation to neural therapeutics.

A hallmark of the International BCI Meeting series is the community-led interactive workshop sessions. In this issue (pg. 69–101), Huggins et al. provides a comprehensive summary of the 21 workshops, which covered a breadth of topics including BCI hardware and software, applications, user groups, standards, large-scale data collection and analysis, ethics, and translation from research to end users. One workshop was expanded into a paper by Han et al. (pg. 102–114), Two sides of the same coin: adaptation of BCIs to internal states with user-centered design and electrophysiological features, which summarizes approaches for adaptive BCIs that aim to improve performance by accounting for the state of the user.

The 2021 virtual BCI meeting also featured 12 research talks and 148 virtual poster presentations that allowed for presentation of peer-reviewed abstracts [8] and interactive discussions. This special issue includes a manuscript that expanded on an abstract presented at the virtual BCI meeting. Benaroch et al. (pg. 115–128), When should MI-BCI feature optimization include prior knowledge, and which one?, examines the characteristics of user-specific frequency bands for classification of motor imagery and shows a correlation between these characteristics and classification performance.

The meeting also included a neuroethics debate that touched on several issues including autonomy, privacy, research goals, informed consent, safety, responsibility, justice, personhood, and stigma. Networking events were held to provide opportunities for trainees to connect with more established researchers in the field. Specifically, two events were hosted by the BCI Society’s Postdoc and Student Committee. First, the committee hosted a Diversity Social where delegates could learn more about education, advocacy and allyship to create a community of equity and inclusive excellence in the BCI Society. The Diversity Social was an opportunity for all members of the BCI community to engage with issues related to their individual identities. Second, a Speed Dating event allowed more than 75 students to have up to 3 dedicated appointments to meet with a leading researcher. The event also included a designated Gather Town [9] area where all delegates were invited to casually mingle and connect with one another.

In summary, despite the circumstances and virtual format, the 8th International BCI Meeting continued the productive tradition of the BCI Meeting series. The 9th International BCI Meeting is scheduled to be held from June 6–9, 2023 at Dolce La Hulpe, Sonian Forest, Brussels, Belgium. After multiple years of postponement due to the global pandemic, the meeting is planned to be in-person and the first International BCI Meeting held outside the United States. This upcoming meeting represents a much-needed return to normalcy, and the resumption of face-to-face interactions is envisioned to rekindle enthusiasm and inspiration for the next frontiers of the BCI field.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The editors would like to acknowledge support for the 8^th International Brain-Computer Interface Meeting from the following sources: the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (Flanders grant no. K702320N, Grant for the organization of a scientific meeting in Belgium – Type II, PI: Marc van Hulle), the Wellcome Trust (PI: Mariska Vansteensel), the National Science Foundation Human-Centered Computing Program in the Division of Information & Intelligence Systems (grant no. 2011421, PI: Charles Anderson), and the National Institute On Deafness And Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R13DC018466 (PI: Jennifer Collinger). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or other funding institutes.