An ERP-based Brain-Computer Interface for text entry using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation and Language Modeling

Kenneth E. Hild II, Umut Orhan, Deniz Erdogmus, Brian Roark, Barry Oken, Shalini Purwar, Hooman Nezamfar, Melanie Fried-Oken

Abstract: Event related potentials (ERP) corresponding to stimuli in electroencephalography (EEG) can be used to detect the intent of a person for brain computer interfaces (BCI). This paradigm is widely used to build letter-by-letter text input systems using BCI. Nevertheless using a BCI-typewriter depending only on EEG responses will not be sufficiently accurate for single-trial operation in general, and existing systems utilize many-trial schemes to achieve accuracy at the cost of speed. Hence incorporation of a language model based prior or additional evidence is vital to improve accuracy and speed. In this demonstration we will present a BCI system for typing that integrates a stochastic language model with ERP classification to achieve speedups, via the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm.