Development of a Guidance System for Motor Imagery Enhancement Using the Virtual Hand Illusion

Motor imagery (MI) is widely used to produce input signals for brain–computer interfaces (BCI) due to the similarities between MI-BCI and the planning–execution cycle. Despite its usefulness, MI tasks can be ambiguous to users and MI produces weaker cortical signals than motor execution. Existing MI guidance systems, which have been reported to provide visual guidance for MI and enhance MI, still have limitations: insufficient immersion for MI or poor expandability to MI for another body parts. We propose a guidance system for MI enhancement that can immerse users in MI and will be easy to extend to other body parts and target motions with few physical constraints. To make easily extendable MI guidance system, the virtual hand illusion is applied to the MI guidance system with a motion tracking sensor. MI enhancement was evaluated in 11 healthy people by comparison with another guidance system and conventional motor commands for BCI. The results showed that the proposed MI guidance system produced an amplified cortical signal compared to pure MI (p < 0.017), and a similar cortical signal as those produced by both actual execution (p > 0.534) and an MI guidance system with the rubber hand illusion (p > 0.722) in the contralateral region. Therefore, we believe that the proposed MI guidance system with the virtual hand illusion is a viable alternative to existing MI guidance systems in various applications with MI-BCI.