Closed-loop error damping in human BCI using pre-error motor cortex activity

Intracortical brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are used to decode motor intent from neural population activity; their main clinical application is to restore function for individuals with motor or communication deficits. However, when trying to reconstruct movement trajectories, such as in computer cursor control, even state-of-the-art decoders fall short of able-bodied performance during online BCI control. This calls for alternative approaches to improve the usability of motor BCIs. Here, we leveraged an error signal, i.e. a neural correlate of faulty motor control that can be detected from neural activity. By detecting this error signal in parallel to performing movement decoding, it is possible to perform error modulation, i.e. real-time error detection and correction during a closed-loop motor BCI task. We analyzed data from four individuals with upper limb impairment due to cervical spinal cord injury who each used an intracortical BCI to perform a continuous cursor control task with visual feedback. A classifier was trained to detect the error signal and was used to perform online error detection during BCI control to limit ongoing errors (defined as movement of the controller away from its target) without requiring any specific action from the participants. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we show that the error signal has a pre-error component. Cortical activity was already significantly modulated before the onset of the kinematically-defined error, theoretically allowing for earlier detection. Second, we show that error modulation significantly improves performance during online BCI control of cursor kinematics. Finally, we show that the error signal can be robustly leveraged across contexts, as error modulation improves performance in more complex motor tasks (involving for instance grasp and drag actions) or other environments without task-specific calibration. Overall, our results suggest that the error signal can be robustly disentangled from motor intent in cortical activity, and that even a simple linear classifier can enable error modulation in parallel to a continuous kinematic decoder, yielding more reliable and accurate BCI control.