Effect of Motor Intensity on Motion Imagery with Electroencephalogram Signal Analysis in Mirror Neuron System

Recently, BMIs (Brain Machine Interfaces) attract many researchers' attentions. Most of these BMIs for human beings control the external devices or prostheses by detecting subject's motion intent using EEG from the scalp of the subject's brain. However, in most of such non-invasive BMIs, the EEG signals are mainly used as triggers and the control can be regarded as ON/OFF control. On the other hand, we aim to realize robotic power assistance to support human by using EEG signals. For this, the purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between EEG and motor intensity and further to realize the control according to motor intensity. In this paper, we design and conduct four different experiments to investigate the relationship between EEG and motor intensity based on the concept of Mirror Neuron System. The results show that extracting the motion and motor intensity information from EEG signals is possible. This implies a great potential of using EEG signals for robotic power assistance to support human's life.