Development of a Cognitive Brain-Machine Interface Based on a Visual Imagery Method

In the field of brain-machine interface (BMI) research, the development of cognitive BMI is a hot topic because it may lead to more intuitive and goal-directed findings than existing BMI technology. In this study, we devised a “visual-imagery method,” which enables visual imaging of the operation of a target. We also investigated an “inner-speech method,” which comprised internal pronunciation of words without emitting sounds, and an “inner-speech + visual-imagery method,” which combined the two methods. When only the high γ band (60-120 Hz) power in the prefrontal cortex was used, the average accuracy of the 15 participants, with 20-fold crossvalidation, was 81.3% in inner speech, 84.6% in visual imagery, and 83.2% in inner speech + visual imagery. This study also found that the frontal pole was the most useful region in the prefrontal cortex.