In: Schmorrow D., Fidopiastis C. (eds) Foundations of Augmented Cognition: Neuroergonomics and Operational Neuroscience.

Abstract

Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIR) is a promising brain imaging technology that relies on optical techniques to detect changes of hemodynamic responses within the prefrontal cortex in response to sensory, motor, or cognitive activation. fNIR is safe, non-invasive, affordable, and highly portable. The objective of this study is to determine if biomarkers of neural activity generated by intentional cognitive activity, as measured by fNIR, can be used to communicate directly from the brain to a computer. A bar-size-control task based on a closed-loop system was designed and tested with 5 healthy subjects across two days. Comparisons of the average task and rest period oxygenation changes are significantly different (p<0.01). The average task completion time (reaching +90%) decreases with practice: day1 (mean 52.3 sec) and day2 (mean 39.1 sec). These preliminary results suggest that a closed-loop fNIR-based BCI can allow for a human-computer interaction with a mind switch task.