A new mode of EEG based communication

A new method of communication is proposed for paralysed patients using EEG signals. A scheme based on Morse code is used to construct meaningful words using recognised mental tasks. A benefit of this system is as a means of communication between paralysed patients and their external environment i.e. as an interface for use by people with severe physical disabilities. As the technology advances, it is envisaged that this technique could be used by anyone for rudimentary user-interface actions, like popping up windows and making menu choices. The EEG signals are segmented and power spectral values are extracted using Wiener-Khintchine theorem with Parzen window smoothing. A Fuzzy ARTMAP (FA) classifier is used to classify these signals into three different mental tasks, where each task either represents dit, dah or space. We have analysed different mental tasks and show that the performance with different tasks varies greatly for different subjects. The FA classification results in this paper have shown that it is highly possible to recognise three different mental tasks for each subject provided that these three tasks, which varies for different subjects are chosen after some preliminary simulations.