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Abidirectional brain-computer interface for effective epilepsy control

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Abstract

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can provide direct bidirectional communication between the brain and a machine. Recently, the BCI technique has been used in seizure control. Usually, a closed-loop system based on BCI is set up which delivers a therapic electrical stimulus only in response to seizure onsets. In this way, the side effects of neurostimulation can be greatly reduced. In this paper, a new BCI-based responsive stimulation system is proposed. With an efficient morphology-based seizure detector, seizure events can be identified in the early stages which trigger electrical stimulations to be sent to the cortex of the brain. The proposed system was tested on rats with penicillin-induced epileptic seizures. Online experiments show that 83% of the seizures could be detected successfully with a short average time delay of 3.11 s. With the therapy of the BCI-based seizure control system, most seizures were suppressed within 10 s. Compared with the control group, the average seizure duration was reduced by 30.7%. Therefore, the proposed system can control epileptic seizures effectively and has potential in clinical applications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Qiushi Academy for Advanced Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Yu Qi, Ting-ting Ge, Yue-ming Wang & Xiao-xiang Zheng

  2. Department of Computer Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Yu Qi, Ting-ting Ge, Yue-ming Wang & Zhao-hui Wu

  3. Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University College of Medicine, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Fei-qiang Ma, Jun-ming Zhu & Jian-min Zhang

  4. College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Xiao-xiang Zheng

Authors
  1. Yu Qi
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  2. Fei-qiang Ma
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  3. Ting-ting Ge
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  4. Yue-ming Wang
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  5. Jun-ming Zhu
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  6. Jian-min Zhang
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  7. Xiao-xiang Zheng
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  8. Zhao-hui Wu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yue-ming Wang.

Additional information

Project supported by the National Basic Research Program (973) of China (No. 2013CB329500), the National High-Tech R&D Program (863) of China (No. 2012AA020408), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61103107), and the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No. 20110101120154)

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Qi, Y., Ma, Fq., Ge, Tt. et al. Abidirectional brain-computer interface for effective epilepsy control. J. Zhejiang Univ. - Sci. C 15, 839–847 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.C1400152

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.C1400152

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