Stimulus Specificity of Brain-Computer Interfaces Based on Code Modulation Visual Evoked Potentials

A brain-computer interface (BCI) based on code modulated visual evoked potentials (c-VEP) is among the fastest BCIs that have ever been reported, but it has not yet been given a thorough study. In this study, a pseudorandom binary M sequence and its time lag sequences are utilized for modulation of different stimuli and template matching is adopted as the method for target recognition. Five experiments were devised to investigate the effect of stimulus specificity on target recognition and we made an effort to find the optimal stimulus parameters for size, color and proximity of the stimuli, length of modulation sequence and its lag between two adjacent stimuli. By changing the values of these parameters and measuring classification accuracy of the c-VEP BCI, an optimal value of each parameter can be attained. Experimental results of ten subjects showed that stimulus size of visual angle 3.8 degrees, white, spatial proximity of visual angle 4.8 degrees center to center apart, modulation sequence of length 63 bits and the lag of 4 bits between adjacent stimuli yield individually superior performance. These findings provide a basis for determining stimulus presentation of a high-performance c-VEP based BCI system.