Visualization and manipulation of our perception and imagery by BCI by Takufumi Yanagisawa

【Title】Visualization and manipulation of our perception and imagery by BCI

【Speaker】Takufumi Yanagisawa, Professor, Osaka University

【Abstract】
We have been developing Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) using electrocorticography (ECoG) [1] , which is recorded by electrodes implanted on brain surface, and magnetoencephalography (MEG) [2] , which records the cortical activities non-invasively, for the clinical applications. The invasive BCI using ECoG has been applied for severely paralyzed patient to restore the communication and motor function. The non-invasive BCI using MEG has been applied as a neurofeedback tool to modulate some pathological neural activities to treat some neuropsychiatric disorders. Although these techniques have been developed for clinical application, BCI is also an important tool to investigate neural function. For example, motor BCI records some neural activities in a part of the motor cortex to generate some movements of external devices. Although our motor system consists of complex system including motor cortex, basal ganglia, cerebellum, spinal cord and muscles, the BCI affords us to simplify the motor system with exactly known inputs, outputs and the relation of them. We can investigate the motor system by manipulating the parameters in BCI system. Recently, we are developing some BCIs to visualize and manipulate our perception and mental imagery. Although these BCI has been developed for clinical application, the BCI will be useful to understand our neural system to generate the
perception and imagery. In this talk, I will introduce our study of phantom limb pain [3] ,
that is controlled by MEG-BCI, and the development of a communication BCI using ECoG [4] ,
that enable the subject to visualize the contents of their mental imagery. And I would like
to discuss how much we can control our cortical activities that represent our perception
and mental imagery. These examples demonstrate that BCI is a promising tool to visualize
and manipulate the perception and imagery and to understand our consciousness.

References
1. Yanagisawa, T., Hirata, M., Saitoh, Y., Kishima, H., Matsushita, K., Goto, T.,
Fukuma, R., Yokoi, H., Kamitani, Y., and Yoshimine, T. (2012).
Electrocorticographic control of a prosthetic arm in paralyzed patients. Ann
Neurol 71, 353-361.
2. Yanagisawa, T., Fukuma, R., Seymour, B., Hosomi, K., Kishima, H., Shimizu, T.,
Yokoi, H., Hirata, M., Yoshimine, T., Kamitani, Y., et al. (2016). Induced
sensorimotor brain plasticity controls pain in phantom limb patients. Nature
communications 7, 13209.
3. Yanagisawa, T., Fukuma, R., Seymour, B., Tanaka, M., Hosomi, K., Yamashita, O.,
Kishima, H., Kamitani, Y., and Saitoh, Y. (2020). BCI training to move a virtual
hand reduces phantom limb pain: A randomized crossover trial. Neurology 95, e417-
e426.
4. Ryohei Fukuma, Takufumi Yanagisawa, Shinji Nishimoto, Hidenori Sugano, Kentaro
Tamura, Shota Yamamoto, Yasushi Iimura, Yuya Fujita, Satoru Oshino, Naoki Tani,
Naoko Koide-Majima, Yukiyasu Kamitani, Haruhiko Kishima (2022). Voluntary control
of semantic neural representations by imagery with conflicting visual
stimulation. arXiv arXiv:2112.01223.

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[JoshBugg]

Thanks for this talk, really interested, particularly the semantic decoding of brain activity. I'm confused by the slide titled Semantic decoding showing PCA component correlations. Is this showing the correlation between the semantic vectors and the PCAs of the semantic vector, and if so why/ what is the significance of that? Or is it showing a correlation between the PCAs of the semantic vectors and the gamma power? If so this makes more sense but still not 100% clear. Thank you!