Democratizing EEG: Embedding Electroencephalography in a Head-Mounted Display for Ubiquitous Brain-Computer Interfacing

Abstract

Open hardware and the need for ecologically valid measurements drive the Electroencephalography (EEG) democratization movement—EEG has been steadily transcending the boundaries of clinical research, making its way into interdisciplinary fields. In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), EEG is used to measure cognitive workload and infer cognitive processes for building cognition-aware systems. We describe and evaluate our BCIglass prototype where EEG electrodes are embedded in the frame of a mainstream Head-Mounted Display (HMD) to create a skull-peripheral topology. We devised a lab study with 34 participants who completed seven established cognitive tasks. Then, we conducted a pilot field study with one participant to test BCIglass in everyday-life settings. Our findings demonstrate that BCIglass captures EEG activity in a manner comparable to a research-grade EEG-cap system. Our topology infers the cognitive task at hand, and the underlying cognitive process(es) by proxy, with an accuracy of ∼80% and only three electrodes at the skull periphery. Embedding EEG electrodes in lightweight HMDs represents a promising approach in the quest to achieve ubiquitous brain-computer interfacing in real-world settings.