Effect Of Stimulus Direction On Motion-Onset Visual Evoked Potentials Decoded Using Spatiotemporal Beamforming Abstract

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) establish a direct communication channel between the brain and a computer bypassing the former's output pathways. A less explored yet less taxing visual BCI paradigm relies on a briefly moving stimulus, the onset of which elicits a lateralized potential over the parieto-occipital scalp area called motion-onset visual evoked potental (mVEP). In this study, the effect of stimulation direction on this potential is investigated both in terms of scalp activation and BCI performance. A novel regularized spatiotemporal beamforming algorithm for mVEP decoding is introduced, and its performance compared to that of traditional mVEP decoders. While a clear dependency in scalp activation for stimulus direction is observed, it does not affect BCI performance for any of the considered decoders.