Abstract
Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) based on an event-related potential (ERP) component, P300, elicited via the oddball paradigm, have been extensively developed to enable device control and communication. While most P300-based BCIs employ visual stimuli in the oddball paradigm, auditory P300-based BCIs also need to be developed for users with unreliable gaze control or limited visual processing. Specifically, auditory BCIs without additional visual support or multi-channel sound sources can broaden the application areas of BCIs. This study aimed to design optimal stimuli for auditory BCIs among artificial (e.g., beep) and natural (e.g., human voice and animal sounds) sounds in such circumstances. In addition, it aimed to investigate differences between auditory and visual stimulations for online P300-based BCIs. As a result, natural sounds led to both higher online BCI performance and larger differences in ERP amplitudes between the target and non-target compared to artificial sounds. However, no single type of sound offered the best performance for all subjects; rather, each subject indicated different preferences between the human voice and animal sound. In line with previous reports, visual stimuli yielded higher BCI performance (average 77.56%) than auditory counterparts (average 54.67%). In addition, spatiotemporal patterns of the differences in ERP amplitudes between target and non-target were more dynamic with visual stimuli than with auditory stimuli. The results suggest that selecting a natural auditory stimulus optimal for individual users as well as making differences in ERP amplitudes between target and non-target stimuli more dynamic may further improve auditory P300-based BCIs. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11571-022-09901-3.