conditional stimulator and generic temporal display

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fabien.lotte
Posts: 112
Joined: Sun Mar 14, 2010 12:58 pm

conditional stimulator and generic temporal display

Post by fabien.lotte »

Hi Guys,

While working on new openvibe scenarios, I realized the two following boxes could prove useful, so I am mentioning them here:

- a generic temporal display: a display, similar to the basic signal display but that could display something else that brain signals, such as the output of a classifier (streamed matrix) over time, or features, etc. It could be very useful, for instance, to visualize the output of the classifier over time, in particular for self-paced (asynchronous) BCI designs.

- a conditional stimulator: a box that would send on its ouput a given stimulation if a given condition on its inputs is met. For instance, if the value on input 1 is above a given threshold, then it would send a given stimulation. It could be used, for instance, to display a given picture with the display cue image box, when a classifier output is above a threshold.

Best,

Fabien

lbonnet
Site Admin
Posts: 417
Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2009 12:11 pm

Re: conditional stimulator and generic temporal display

Post by lbonnet »

Thanks Fabien for sharing ideas !
- a generic temporal display: a display, similar to the basic signal display but that could display something else that brain signals, such as the output of a classifier (streamed matrix) over time, or features, etc. It could be very useful, for instance, to visualize the output of the classifier over time, in particular for self-paced (asynchronous) BCI designs.
Sadly, the Signal Display is now, in many aspects, obsolete and buggy. That kind of visualization - signal or any temporal display - should be handled by a new box. Not on my personal roadmap so far, but if someone around here is willing to help us with that new feature, we will be glad to help !
- a conditional stimulator: a box that would send on its ouput a given stimulation if a given condition on its inputs is met. For instance, if the value on input 1 is above a given threshold, then it would send a given stimulation. It could be used, for instance, to display a given picture with the display cue image box, when a classifier output is above a threshold.
The "conditional" part can be tricky. A simple threshold box should be easy to implement, but do you see other conditions that could be needed ? For complex conditions, a script seems easier to use (as we do with the Lua Stimulator box for stimulation management).

bye
Laurent
Follow us on twitter >> openvibebci

Checkout my (old) blog for some OpenViBE tips & tricks : here !

tomasros
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Apr 13, 2012 9:46 am

Re: conditional stimulator and generic temporal display

Post by tomasros »

I would also agree with Fabien. A conditional stimulator box would be really useful for implementation and experiments with so-called "brain-state dependent stimulation" (BSDS), an emerging area of research in neuroscience.

Please see link below for an open-access article in Frontiers Neuroscience
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108578/

Also, the ConSole software package from the University of Konstanz has been also designed to implement BSDS.
http://www.frontiersin.org/Perception_S ... 6/abstract

It would be nice to see this feature also integrated into OpenVibe ;) A simple (binary) threshold would be a nice start and could be immediately applicable to manipulations based on EEG power, for example.

Best,
Tomas

Tomas Ros, PhD
Neurology & Imaging of Cognition Lab
Department of Fundamental Neurosciences
University of Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.labnic.unige.ch/nic

lbonnet
Site Admin
Posts: 417
Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2009 12:11 pm

Re: conditional stimulator and generic temporal display

Post by lbonnet »

Thanks for sharing this Tomas !

BSDS are quiet interesting indeed... I know some people interested in passive BCI, with monitoring and adaptation of the system according to user-state.
They will find this useful I'm sure :)

For the ConSole library, from what I understood it's a complete system for analyzing EEG or MEG, and producing stimulations according to the current mental state.
It seems to me too high level to be integrated in OpenViBE, as it provides EEG signal processing, display of visual stimuli, etc. Most of the features are already in OpenViBE.
Maybe if we just use the "Conditional" computation part, it could be useful. If someone is willing to give it a try, be my guest :)

In the ùean time, I think the conditional stimulator may be implemented in Python. The Python box can now handle all kind of input and output so it's perfect to design such precise, specialized conditions that would be very time-consuming to develop in C++ one by one if we have to.

Laurent-
Follow us on twitter >> openvibebci

Checkout my (old) blog for some OpenViBE tips & tricks : here !

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