AUTHOR=Riccio Angela , Simione Luca , Schettini Francesca , Pizzimenti Alessia , Inghilleri Maurizio , Olivetti Belardinelli Marta , Mattia Donatella , Cincotti Febo TITLE=Attention and P300-based BCI performance in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience VOLUME=7 YEAR=2013 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00732 DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2013.00732 ISSN=1662-5161 ABSTRACT=

The purpose of this study was to investigate the support of attentional and memory processes in controlling a P300-based brain-computer interface (BCI) in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Eight people with ALS performed two behavioral tasks: (i) a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task, screening the temporal filtering capacity and the speed of the update of the attentive filter, and (ii) a change detection task, screening the memory capacity and the spatial filtering capacity. The participants were also asked to perform a P300-based BCI spelling task. By using correlation and regression analyses, we found that only the temporal filtering capacity in the RSVP task was a predictor of both the P300-based BCI accuracy and of the amplitude of the P300 elicited performing the BCI task. We concluded that the ability to keep the attentional filter active during the selection of a target influences performance in BCI control.