Brain–Computer Interfaces - Index of

274 J. Mellinger and G. Schalk
Fig. 8 A P300-Speller based patient communication system entering text into a word processor
would begin by extending the existing speller system to recognize additional selection
commands, and act upon them by sending appropriate device, or application,
commands. In the present example, no software modification is necessary, since the
standard P300 speller module is capable of sending information about letter selection
to the same or another computer via UDP, where it may be picked up by any
external program. Thus, to connect speller selections to a standard word processor,
it is only necessary to create a small interfacing program that reads letter selections
from the speller’s UDP port, and uses the operating system to send appropriate
keypress events to the word processing application.
Once basic functionality is established, one would wrap up BCI2000, the
interfacing program, and the word processor into a larger system. This system
will use a simplified user interface to be operated by nursing staff. The simplified
user interface may request a user name at startup, and a very limited number of
additional parameters. Once acquired, these parameters will then be concatenated
with a user-specific parameter file that contains the actual BCI configuration. Then,
the system will start up the word processor, the interfacing program, and BCI2000.
Using operator module command line parameters, it will automatically load the
temporarily created parameter file, and begin BCI operation. Once the user selects
a “quit” command, BCI2000 will quit automatically. By configuring BCI2000
appropriately, it is possible to avoid all references to the BCI2000 user interface on
the operator’s screen, and to only retain the application module’s user screen (i.e.,
the speller matrix).
3.4 Multi-Site Research
Cooperation across multiple research sites requires agreement on standards regarding
experimental design, documentation, data formats. Here, BCI2000 helps by