A Boosting Approach to P300 Detection with Application to Brain-Computer Interfaces

Gradient boosting is a machine learning method, that builds one strong classifier from many weak classifiers. In this work, an algorithm based on gradient boosting is presented, that detects event-related potentials in single electroencephalogram (EEG) trials. The algorithm is used to detect the P300 in the human EEG and to build a brain-computer interface (BCI), specifically a spelling device. Important features of the method described here are its high classification accuracy and its conceptual simplicity. The algorithm was tested with datasets recorded in our lab and one benchmark dataset from the BCI Competition 2003. The number of correctly inferred symbols with the P300 speller paradigm varied between 90% and 100%. In particular, all of the inferred symbols were correct for the BCI competition dataset.