The effect of selective attention on multiple ASSRs for future BCI application

Abstract

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that utilize auditory stimuli have been designed to support users or patients with visual impairment that are incapable of using the conventional visual-based BCI. As an alternative to auditory P300-based BCI, researchers have reported the possibility of using the auditory steady state response (ASSR) in the binary-class BCI system. In the present work, we investigated the effect of selective attention on the amplitude of ASSRs when three ASSR stimuli are simultaneously given. The result shows that the amplitude of ASSR is significantly increased by approximately 20% when the subject selectively attend to the target stimulus. There is also no difference in the effect of selective attention between when two stimuli and three stimuli are given. This current work suggests the possibility of incooperating ASSR into the auditory BCI system that deal with multiple-class problem.