Single-trial detection of EEG error-related potentials in serial visual presentation paradigm

Abstract

Abstract When the outcome of an event is not the same as expected, the cognitive state that monitors performance elicits a time-locked brain response termed as Error-Related Potential (ErrP). Objective—In the existing work, ErrP is not recorded when there is a disassociation between an object and its description. The objective of this work is to propose a Serial Visual Presentation (SVP) experimental paradigm to record ErrP when an image and its label are disassociated. Additionally, this work aims to propose a novel method for detecting ErrP on a single-trial basis. Method—The method followed in this work includes designing of SVP paradigm in which labeled images from six categories (bike, car, flower, fruit, cat, and dog) are presented serially. In this work, a text (visual) or an audio clip describing the image in one word is presented as the label. Further, the ErrP is detected on a single-trial basis using novel electrode-averaged features. Results - The ErrP data recorded from 11 subjects’ have consistent characteristics compared to existing ErrP literature. Detection of ErrP on a single-trial basis is carried out using a novel feature extraction method on two type labeling types separately. The best average classification accuracy achieved is 69.09 ± 4.70 % and 63.33 ± 4.56 % for the audio and visual type of labeling the image, respectively. The proposed feature extraction method achieved higher classification accuracy when compared with two existing feature extraction methods. Significance - The significance of this work is that it can be used as a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) system for quantitative evaluation and treatment of mild cognitive impairment. This work can also find non-clinical BCI applications such as image annotation.