The Self-Face Paradigm Improves the Performance of the P300-Speller System

Objective: Previous studies have shown that the performance of the famous face P300-speller was better than that of the classical row/column flashing P300-speller. Furthermore, in some studies, the brain was more active when responding to one’s own face than to a famous face, and a self-face stimulus elicited larger amplitude event-related potentials (ERPs) than did a famous face. Thus, we study the self-face paradigm on further improving the performance of P300-speller system and take the famous face P300-speller paradigm as the control paradigm. Methods: We designed two facial P300-speller paradigms based on the self-face and a famous face (Ming Yao, a sports star; the famous face spelling paradigm) with a neutral expression. Results: ERP amplitudes were significantly greater in the self-face than in the famous face spelling paradigm at the parietal area from 340 ms to 480 ms (P300), from 480 ms to 600 ms (P600f), and at the fronto-central area from 700 ms to 800 ms. Offline and online classification results showed that the self-face spelling paradigm accuracies were significantly higher than those of the famous face spelling paradigm at superposing first two times (P < 0.05). Similar results were found for information transfer rates (P < 0.05). Conclusions: The self-face spelling paradigm significantly improved the performance of the P300-speller system. This has significant practical applications for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and could avoid infringement issues caused by using images of other people’s faces.