Assessing the Impact of Population Data Domain Differences on Transfer Learning in P300-based Brain-Computer Interfaces
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can provide a means of communication for individuals with severe neuromuscular diseases, the target end-users. While personalized BCI machine learning models are the current standard, models trained on data from other users could reduce BCI calibration time. We use a novel dataset with BCI users with and without amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and a popular BCI deep learning model, EEGNet, to assess the impact of population domain data on transfer learning of a P300 speller task in the ALS cohort. Results show that training on source data from the non-ALS cohort was detrimental to transfer learning. In contrast, generic EEGNet models trained on source data from the ALS cohort performed comparably as user-specific models. Our findings highlight the need for more data from target end-users populations in publicly available BCI datasets.
