Classification of mental tasks in the prefrontal cortex using fNIRS.

Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is rapidly gaining interest in both the Neuroscience, as well as the Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI) community. Despite these efforts, most single-trial analysis of fNIRS data is focused on motor-imagery, or mental arithmetics. In this study, we investigate the suitability of different mental tasks, namely mental arithmetics, word generation and mental rotation for fNIRS based BCIs. We provide the first systematic comparison of classification accuracies achieved in a sample study. Data was collected from 10 subjects performing these three tasks.