Frontiers in Neuroscience (Oct 2015)

The WIN-Speller: A new Intuitive Auditory Brain-Computer Interface Spelling Application

  • Sonja C Kleih,
  • Andreas eHerweg,
  • Tobias eKaufmann,
  • Pit eStaiger-Saelzer,
  • Natscha eGerstner,
  • Andrea eKübler

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2015.00346
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

Read online

The objective of this study was to test the usability of a new auditory Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) application for communication. We introduce a word based, intuitive auditory spelling paradigm the WIN-speller. In the WIN-speller letters are grouped by words, such as the word KLANG representing the letters A, G, K, L and N. Thereby, the decoding step between perceiving a code and translating it to the stimuli it represents becomes superfluous. We tested 11 healthy volunteers and 4 end-users with motor impairment in the copy spelling mode. Spelling was successful with an average accuracy of 84% in the healthy sample. Three of the end-users communicated with average accuracies of 80% or higher while one user was not able to communicate reliably. Even though further evaluation is required, the WIN-speller represents a potential alternative for BCI based communication in end-users.

Keywords