Attempted Arm and Hand Movements can be Decoded from Low-Frequency EEG from Persons with Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

We show that persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) retain decodable neural correlates of attempted arm and hand movements. We investigated hand open, palmar grasp, lateral grasp, pronation, and supination in 10 persons with cervical SCI. Discriminative movement information was provided by the time-domain of low-frequency electroencephalography (EEG) signals. Based on these signals, we obtained a maximum average classification accuracy of 45% (chance level was 20%) with respect to the five investigated classes. Pattern analysis indicates central motor areas as the origin of the discriminative signals. Furthermore, we introduce a proof-of-concept to classify movement attempts online in a closed loop, and tested it on a person with cervical SCI. We achieved here a modest classification performance of 68.4% with respect to palmar grasp vs hand open (chance level 50%).

A review of user training methods in brain computer interfaces based on mental tasks

“…Finally, although the task may no longer be strictly a pure mental command, there are contexts where some users may be asked to perform quasimovements (maximally reduced movements indistinguishable through ElectroMyoGraphy (EMG) measures [74]), which seems promising to gradually train users to perform motor imagery. In the context of neuroprostheses or stroke-rehabilitation applications, users suffering from motor impairments can also be asked to perform attempted movements instead of imagined movements [272]. However, it is uncertain how the recommendations reported in the present review apply to training non-mental tasks.…”

Analyzing and Decoding Natural Reach-and-Grasp Actions Using Gel, Water and Dry EEG Systems

“…Recent investigations have shown that brain patterns of singular upper limb movements can be identified and decoded from EEGs’ low frequency time domain (LFTD) signals. These so called movement-related cortical potentials (MRCPs) ( Shibasaki et al, 1980 ) have been shown to hold discriminable information of upper limb movements ( Ofner et al, 2017 ), different grasps ( Agashe et al, 2015 ; Jochumsen et al, 2016 ), different reach-and-grasp actions ( Randazzo et al, 2015 ; Iturrate et al, 2018 ; Schwarz et al, 2018 , 2019 ) and can even be decoded online ( Ofner et al, 2019 ; Schwarz et al, 2020 ).…”

Distinct cortical networks for hand movement initiation and directional processing: An EEG study

“…Apart from encoding the initiation of executed ( Lew et al., 2012 ), attempted ( Ofner et al., 2019 ) and imagined ( Pereira et al., 2018 ) upper-limb movements, MRCPs have also been reported to encode information about goal-directedness ( Pereira et al., 2017 ), speed ( Gu et al., 2009 ), force ( Jochumsen et al., 2013 ), grasp types ( Schwarz et al., 2018 ), other movements of the upper limb ( Ofner et al., 2017 , Ofner et al., 2019 ) and movement direction ( Li et al., 2012 , Waldert et al., 2008 ). The representation of directional information within the MRCP is typically studied during center-out reaching tasks and aligned to the response ( Robinson and Vinod, 2016 ).…”