A Man vs. Machine Shootout Duel: Do we have Control over our Intention-Predictive Brain Signals? In a Real-time Duelling Game Subjects try to execute Self-initiated Movements before being predicted and interrupted by an EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface
-
1
Berlin Insitute of Technology, Germany
-
2
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Germany
In humans, spontaneous decisions are often preceded by brain signals that can occur up to several seconds before a choice (Kornhuber & Deecke, 1965; Soon et al., 2008). One interesting question is whether these choice-predictive brain signals occur necessarily, as part of a fixed causal chain leading up to a decision, or whether they might be under control of the subject (Haynes, 2011). In this study, we address this question by testing whether participants can avoid that their movements are predicted from prior brain signals in the EEG. This situation is comparable to a shootout duel where a gunman wants to draw without being predictable.
Ten subjects participated in this study, which was divided into two experimental stages. During the first stage, EEG data preceding self-initiated button presses was recorded and used to train a brain-computer interface (BCI) classifier. In the second stage, participants played a game where they tried to press the button unpredictably, without their movement being predicted by the BCI classifier. he ongoing EEG was used by the BCI in real-time (Blankertz et al. 2011) to predict and interrupt the participants' movements. If they pressed the button before the BCI predicted the movement they would win points, otherwise they would lose points.
Real-time prediction of spontaneous, self-initiated movements was possible with a true positive rate of 52±8% (mean±SEM). As a result, participants consistently lost the duel against the computer, despite their efforts to avoid prediction. In an offline analysis of the EEG data significant predictive information about the intention was found to exist up to 700 ms before the movement onset.
We show for the first time the feasibility of predicting movements in real-time using state-of-the-art EEG-based BCIs. The finding that participants are unable to win the duel suggests that voluntary control over decision-predictive brain signals is highly limited.
Keywords:
EEG,
Brain-computer interface,
readiness potential,
predictive brain signals,
self-initiated movement
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Cognition and Executive Processes
Citation:
Schultze-Kraft
M,
Birman
D,
Rusconi
M,
Daehne
S,
Blankertz
B and
Haynes
J
(2015). A Man vs. Machine Shootout Duel: Do we have Control over our Intention-Predictive Brain Signals? In a Real-time Duelling Game Subjects try to execute Self-initiated Movements before being predicted and interrupted by an EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00309
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Mr. Matthias Schultze-Kraft, Berlin Insitute of Technology, Berlin, Germany, schultze-kraft@bccn-berlin.de