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Ear-EEG: Continuous Brain Monitoring

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Brain-Computer Interface Research

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Abstract

We present a radically new way of recording EEG comfortably and unobtrusively over long time-periods in natural environments. This break-through has been achieved using electrodes embedded on a customized earpiece as typically used in hearing aids (Ear-EEG). We illustrate the potential of Ear-EEG as an enabling technology for a number of uses beyond traditional BCI, which are currently limited by the inconvenience of standard EEG recording methods. We show that Ear-EEG enables both conventional BCI and next-generation applications such as the evaluation of hearing capability and the monitoring of fatigue and drowsiness.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The in-ear setup used to obtain the results shown in Fig. 5 was electrode ELB referenced to ELH (Kidmose et al. 2013).

  2. 2.

    The SNR of the ASSR is defined as the power spectrum ratio of the response peak to the background EEG [see also Fig. 3 (lower, left)].

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Correspondence to Danilo P. Mandic .

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Looney, D., Kidmose, P., Morrell, M.J., Mandic, D.P. (2014). Ear-EEG: Continuous Brain Monitoring. In: Guger, C., Vaughan, T., Allison, B. (eds) Brain-Computer Interface Research. SpringerBriefs in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09979-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09979-8_6

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