Transient visual evoked potential -based method of detecting idle brain state in the event-related potential-based brain-computer interface

Setting up an asynchronous event-related potential based brain-computer interface system is a challenge, since low signal-to-noise ratio of event-related potential makes it hard to discriminate the work and the idle states of a brain. We find the visual interface based on an odd-ball paradigm can simultaneously evoke event-related potential and transient visual evoked potential. The frequency of the transient visual evoked potential is modulated by the flashing rate of the visual stimulus that is used to induce event-related potential. This paper proposes an asynchronous brain-computer interface system that combines these two kinds of induced potentials to detect the two mental states in the time-frequency domain. The novel method achieves an accuracy of 96.50%. Compared with the traditional method, it improves the accuracy of 46.50%.