Towards Successful Multi-User Brain-Computer Interface (Bci) Gaming: Analysis Of The Eeg Signatures And Connectivity

The information related to the impact of multi-user BCI on cortical activity is still relatively limited. This ongoing study performed a competitive multi-user BCI gaming that is based on alpha band operant conditioning and explored the brain activity and connectivity during the most, and the least successful gaming runs. Ten healthy adults were involved in three days of gaming experiments in pairs. Multi-channel paired ttest found a significant decrease (p<0.05) of absolute alpha power in the frontal left hemisphere channels in the dominant players during the most successful gaming compared to the baseline of the same group. This decrease is associated with the frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) that occurred in the leading players. Connectivity estimation via partial directed coherence (PDC) was also performed, showing the deactivation of brain networks during the successful gaming of the dominant players compared to their baseline which might indicate the "networks switching" mechanism from resting state to a more-demanding cognitive task. Different baseline connectivity patterns were also found in the group of dominant players compared to the group of non-dominant players, suggesting the possibility of using baseline connectivity information as a predictor of gaming performance.