Is the P300 Speller Independent?

Abstract: The P300 speller is being considered as an independent brain-computer interface. That means it measures the user's intent, and does not require the user to move any muscles. In particular it should not require eye fixation of the desired character. However, it has been shown that posterior electrodes provide significant discriminative information, which is likely related to visual processing. These findings imply the need for studies controlling the effect of eye movements. In experiments with a 3x3 character matrix, attention and eye fixation was directed to different characters. In the event-related potentials, a P300 occurred for the attended character, and N200 was seen for the trials showing the focussed character. It occurred at posterior sites, reaching its peak at 200ms after stimulus onset. The results suggest that gaze direction plays an important role in P300 speller paradigm. By controlling gaze direction it is possible to separate voluntary and involuntary EEG responses to the highlighting of characters.