A Memory Stimulating Brain-Computer Interface

Kelgere Ramesh Abhinandan

Telecommunication Department, PESIT, 100-ft-Ring Road, Banashankari 3rd stage,

Bangalore-85, India
abhinandanramesh@gmail.com

Abstract. In the current existing technology, literally everything is digital and

machines are built and tuned to understand and respond to human gestures. In
this paper, the human computer interaction platform is used for the treatment of
the disorders, SHORT TERM MEMORY LOSS and ANTEROGRADE
AMNESIA. Victims of these disorders tend to forget stuffs after a short interval
of time, but they have the ability to recover the lost memory and remember
things, when a picture or a story or a scene relating to the lost memory incident
is portrayed to them. This paper presents an idea of building a brain-computer
interface to help the victims recover their lost memory by the visualization of
the previously happened incident in a virtual frame. According to the theory
proposed, the signals are extracted using Electroencephalography and
conditioned for use in real world. These signals are stored in a processor and
fed back to the brain to create a virtual vision so that the lost memory can be
induced.

Keywords: Brain-Computer Interface, Virtual Vision, Memory Stimulator,

Artificial Brain for the Short Term Memory Loss patients.

1 Introduction
Deja vu, a French word representing a dilemma of having seen someone or something
somewhere but unable to correlate it to the memory. How about just closing the eyes
and picturizing that particular forgotten event in a virtual frame of vision? This is
possible when Electronics and the Computer Science takes control of the brain. But
the real challenge is to merge the different platforms offered by the Neuroscience,
Electronics and Computer Science domains. This paper provides an excellent forum
to fold all these domains into a single dimension and create a new Brain Inspired
System. How about using this idea in the medical research field for the stimulation of
memory in the Short Term Memory Loss and Anterograde amnesia patients.
The Anterograde amnesia patients lose the ability to transfer new information to
long-term memory after a brain injury, while long-term memories from before the
injury remain intact. Oftentimes, the brain being a powerful and miraculous organ,
will “remap” itself or remapping can be achieved through brainstorming by showing
the previously happened incidents in the form of a virtual vision or images or video
clips resulting in the patient regaining the ability to store memories. But the virtual
vision seems so close to real as if it is happening right in front of their eyes as

D. Liu et al. (Eds.): BICS 2013, LNAI 7888, pp. 182–191, 2013.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
 A Memory Stimulating Brain-Computer Interface 183

compared to the normal real world pictures. So, this method provides an efficient way
of brainstorming thereby helping the brain to remap. This paper proposes a system to
induce the virtual vision in the patient.
Short term memory loss is a recent new disorder observed with certain people.
People affected with the Short term memory loss have the tendency to forget
everything happened around them after a short interval of time, let’s say a day for
example. After a day, they won’t even have the faintest idea of what happened around
them, be it the recent memory or the long term memory. It is like a fresh start for
them everyday, unable to remember anything. But the bright part is that they can
remember those lost memory incidents, if something similar to the lost memory
incident occurs again in front of them. In brain, we are interested in the memory
regions and the visual cortex region. As we all know, brain is a dense network of
neurons, the vision signals in the visual cortex region of the brain passes through a
dense neural network in the form of electrochemical signals and reach the memory
region of the brain. In the memory region, there are three sub regions- short term
memory region, long term memory region and the remote memory area. For the short
term memory loss patients, short term memory region is perfectly fine and works
normal but the long term memory region will be impaired, so they won’t be able to
remember anything after certain period of time. But all the incidents will be deeply
embedded in their long term memory area or the remote memory area but unable to
access them. So, when a similar stimulus in the form of a virtual vision is induced,
this stimulus acts like a driving force and helps them to remember the incident by
correlating it to the hidden memory from the long term or remote memory region. The
patients even forget their own family members and close personal friends for that
matter of fact, but if they are showed with the snaps of them being together, they tend
to remember what happened. Let’s say, suppose a short term memory loss victim
went to a movie with his mother and doesn’t remember one bit about it a week later.
How about with the help of this system, the victims can visualize the exact picture of
being with his mom in a theatre in his head and thereby helping to remember their
previous meeting. This paper is divided into three sections as shown in Fig. 1.

Human Brain

Brain- Computer-Brain
Computer Input The Virtual Output Interface
Interface Brain

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the system