Cortical imaging of sensorimotor rhythms for BCI applications

Rhythmic electroencephalographic (EEG) activities associated with movement imaginations are widely used in developing noninvasive Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) towards replacing or restoring the lost motor function in the paralytics. And it is of great importance to develop imaging techniques to enhance the spatial resolution and specificity of the EEG modality. In our work, we developed an innovative approach of imaging the distributed rhythmic brain activity in the spectral domain. In the present study, we evaluated the proposed technique in experimental data of offline and online imaginations in naive and well-trained BCI subjects. Our results identified the cortical origins of sensorimotor rhythms. We also applied the source imaging approach to classifying mental states for BCI applications and demonstrated its feasibility and superior performance.