Expanding the (kaleido)scope: A literature perspective on using brain-computer interfaces for neurorehabilitation in children

Abstract

for motor recovery. Effective BCI neurorehabilitation has been shown to exploit neuroplastic properties of the brain through mental imagery tasks. However, these applications and results are currently restricted to adults. A systematic search reveals there is essentially no literature describing motor rehabilitative BCI applications that use electroencephalograms (EEG) in children, despite advances in such applications with adults. Further inspection highlights limited literature pursuing research in the field, especially outside of neurofeedback paradigms. Then the question naturally arises, do current literature trends indicate that EEG based BCI motor rehabilitation applications could be translated to children? To provide further evidence beyond the available literature for this particular topic, we present an exploratory survey examining some of the indirect literature related to motor rehabilitation BCI in children. Our goal is to establish if evidence in the related literature supports or discourages research on this topic and if the related studies can help explain the dearth of current research in this area. The investigation found positive literature trends in the indirect studies which support translating these BCI applications to childrenand provide insight into potential pitfalls perhaps responsible for the limited literature. Careful consideration of these pitfalls in conjunction with support from the literature emphasize that fully realized motor rehabilitation BCI applications for children are feasible and would be beneficial