A simple generative model for single-trial EEG classification

In this paper we present a simple and straightforward approach to the problem of single-trial classification of event-related potentials (ERP) in EEG. We exploit the well-known fact that event-related drifts in EEG potentials can well be observed if averaged over a sufficiently large number of trials. We propose to use the average signal and its variance as a generative model for each event class and use Bayes decision rule for the classification of new, unlabeled data. The method is successfully applied to a data set from the NIPS*2001 Brain-Computer Interface post-workshop competition