Playing a P300-based BCI VR game leads to changes in cognitive functions of healthy adults

Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of a study to determine the effect of the P300-based brain-computer interface (BCI) virtual reality game on the cognitive functions of healthy human subjects. This study is a part of on-going research related to evaluation of the the long-term effect of P300 training in Virtual Reality surrounding (VR game) on the cognitive performance of the young healthy population. A comparison of results between 3 groups of participants (15 people each) revealed the progressing difference in cognitive assessment for experimental group played P300 BCI VR game, showing the positive increase in flanker and conjunction visual search task performance associated with selective attention and mental inhibition. We show that the effect is due to the use of P300 BCI paradigm. Our results suggest that P300 BCI games combined with virtual reality can not only be used for rehabilitation in patients with slight mental disorders or elderly, but for increasing some cognitive functions in healthy subjects, giving an additional improvement in learning in case of combination with possible educational tasks or used for attention training