Practicing fast-decision BCI using a "goalkeeper" paradigm

Brain-computer interfacing (BCI) aims at providing paralyzed patients with a communication device that obviates the need of using the usual motor pathways. A large number of BCI systems is based on motor imagery for encoding the user's intention. Motor imagery typically leads to event-related desynchronization (ERD) of the 10 Hz mu-rhythm in the motor cortex associated to the respective limb. This EEG phenomenon can be used for feedback control for most subjects by a classifier that was individually trained on the subject's EEG [ 1 , 2 ]. We introduce the goalkeeper paradigm that aims at improving online BCI performance by subject training under time pressure conditions.