Stability of MEG for real-time neurofeedback

Movement-related field potentials can be extracted and processed in real-time with magnetoencephalography (MEG) and used for brain machine interfacing (BMI). However, due to its immense sensitivity to magnetic fields, MEG is prone to a low signal to noise ratio. It is therefore important to collect enough initial data to appropriately characterize motor-related activity and to ensure that decoders can be built to adequately translate brain activity into BMI-device commands. This is of particular importance for therapeutic BMI applications where less time spent collecting initial open-loop data means more time for performing neurofeedback training which could potentially promote cortical plasticity and rehabilitation. This study evaluated the amount of hand-grasp movement and rest data needed to characterize sensorimotor modulation depth and build classifier functions to decode brain states in real-time. It was determined that with only five minutes of initial open-loop MEG data, decoders can be built to classify brain activity as grasp or rest in real-time with an accuracy of 84±6%.