Progress in Brain Computer Interface: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Brain computer interfaces (BCI) provide a direct communication link between the brain and a computer or other external devices. They offer an extended degree of freedom either by strengthening or by substituting human peripheral working capacity and have potential applications in various fields such as rehabilitation, affective computing, robotics, gaming, and neuroscience. Significant research efforts on a global scale have delivered common platforms for technology standardization and help tackle highly complex and non-linear brain dynamics and related feature extraction and classification challenges. Time-variant psycho-neurophysiological fluctuations and their impact on brain signals impose another challenge for BCI researchers to transform the technology from laboratory experiments to plug-and-play daily life. This review summarizes state-of-the-art progress in the BCI field over the last decades and highlights critical challenges.

Keywords: brain computer interface; cognitive rehabilitation; electrical/hemodynamic brain signals; hybrid/multimodal BCI; neuroimaging techniques; neurosensors.

Figure 1

The number of publications over the years: The statistics was based on a search on PubMed in which “brain computer interface” was the search keyword. The publications those were listed until 4th December 2020 have been accounted only. A significant increase in the number of publications in this decade as compared to the last decade implicates the engagement of a greater community in this field and, thus the importance of BCI technology.

Figure 2

A schematic illustration of the evolution of the brain computer interface (BCI) applications: Cognitive & Perceptual Learning/Rehabilitation (McMillan et al., 1995); Orthosis Control (Pfurtscheller et al., 2000); Music BCI (Rosenboom, 2014); Robotics (Millan et al., 2004); Wheelchair Control (Iturrate et al., 2009); Drowsiness Detection (Lin et al., 2008); Affective Computing (Zander et al., 2009); Brain Racers (Perdikis et al., 2017); Multiplayer Gaming (Nijholt and Poel, 2016); Brain-to-Brain Interface (Rao et al., 2014).