Interfacing Brain and Machine

This chapter is a critical review of the contemporary techniques implemented by various interdisciplinary research groups towards the development of a brain–computer interface (BCI). It begins with a discussion of the fundamental biological aspects of BCI, various operational modes of BCI, positioning of the electrodes on the skull for physiological data acquisition, and different brain activation patterns. The chapter then critically reviews various components of BCI viz., signal pre-processing, feature extraction, classification, post-processing, optimization techniques and necessities/expectations from graphical user interfaces. The chapter ends with a discussion of various strategies in BCI applications, as well as performance measures in evaluating BCI systems.