A Tongue-Machine Interface: Detection of Tongue Positions by Glossokinetic Potentials

Artifacts are electrical activities that are detected along the scalp by an electroencephalography (EEG) but that originate from noncerebral origin, which often need to be eliminated before further processing of EEG signals. Glossokinetic potentials are artifacts related to tongue movements. In this paper we use these glossokinetic artifacts (instead of eliminating them) to automatically detect and classify tongue positions, which is important in developing a tongue-machine interface. We observe that with a specific selection of a few electrode positions, glossokinetic potentials show contralateral patterns, so that the magnitude of potentials is linearly proportional to the tongue positions flicking at the left to the right inside of cheek. We design a simple linear model based on principal component analysis (PCA) to translate glossokinetic potentials into tongue positions. Experiments on cursor control confirm the validity of our method for tongue position detection using glossokinetic potentials.