Exploring Artificial Neural Network Models for c-VEP Decoding in a Brain-Artificial Intelligence Interface

The Conversational Brain-Artificial Intelligence Interface (BAI) is a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help individuals with severe language impairments communicate. It translates users’ broad intentions into coherent, context-specific responses through an advanced AI conversational agent. A critical aspect of intention translation in BAI is the decoding of code-modulated visual evoked potentials (c-VEP) signals. This study evaluates five different artificial neural network (ANN) architectures for decoding c-VEP-based EEG signals in the BAI system, highlighting the efficacy of lightweight, shallow ANN models and pre-training strategies using data from other participants to enhance classification performance. These results provide valuable insights for the application of ANN models in decoding c-VEP-based EEG signals and may benefit other c-VEP-based BCI systems.