Relationship between Success in Motor Imagery of the Right and Left Hands and Users’ Personality Traits

It is known that success in motor imagery in controlling brain–computer interface (BCI) systems can depend on users’ personality traits, while the ratio of activity in various right- and left-hemisphere brain structures depends on personality traits. There are no reports in BCI research on how success in controlling a BCI by subjects with different personality traits is associated with interhemisphere asymmetry. We report here an analysis of associations between personality traits and the accuracy of brain signal classification on movement imagery with the right hand (RH) and left hand (LH) as compared with the resting state in single-episode control of a BCI by naïve subjects. Motor imagery of the RH was more successful by expressive, sensitive extraverts, while motor imagery of the LH was more successful by practical reserved, skeptical, and less sociable people. People open to change were better able to control the BCI by motor imagery of both the RH and LH than traditionalists and conservatives. Analysis of the subjective difficulty of motor imagery showed that the classification accuracy of brain states on imagination of the RH, as compared with imagination of the LH, was greater in people who had greater subjective difficulty imagining RH but not LH movement. These data appear to be linked with the characteristics of information processing and movement organization and dopamine levels in the right and left hemispheres of the brain.