A generic error-related potential classifier based on simulated subjects

Abstract

Error-related potentials (ErrPs) are brain signals known to be generated as a reaction to erroneous events. Several works have shown that not only self-made errors but also mistakes generated by external agents can elicit such event-related potentials. The possibility of reliably measuring ErrPs through non-invasive techniques has increased the interest in the brain-computer interface (BCI) community in using such signals to improve performance, for example, by performing error correction. Extensive calibration sessions are typically necessary to gather sufficient trials for training subject-specific ErrP classifiers. This procedure is not only time-consuming but also boresome for participants. In this paper, we explore the effectiveness of ErrPs in closed-loop systems, emphasizing their dependency on precise single-trial classification. To guarantee the presence of an ErrPs signal in the data we employ and to ensure that the parameters defining ErrPs are systematically varied, we utilize the open-source toolbox SEREEGA for data simulation. We generated training instances and evaluated the performance of the generic classifier on both simulated and real-world datasets, proposing a promising alternative to conventional calibration techniques. Results show that a generic support vector machine classifier reaches balanced accuracies of 72.9%, 62.7%, 71.0%, and 70.8% on each validation dataset. While performing similarly to a leave-one-subject-out approach for error class detection, the proposed classifier shows promising generalization across different datasets and subjects without further adaptation. Moreover, by utilizing SEREEGA, we can systematically adjust parameters to accommodate the variability in the ErrP, facilitating the systematic validation of closed-loop setups. Furthermore, our objective is to develop a universal ErrP classifier that captures the signal's variability, enabling it to determine the presence or absence of an ErrP in real EEG data.