Studying Cognitive Attention Mechanisms during Walking from EEG Signals

On this work several studies related to the analysis of electroencephalographically signals to evaluate the cognitive mechanisms during human gait are compiled. This research is performed in the framework of an European project (BioMot project) oriented to the development of a lower limb exoskeleton controlled by signals from physiological and kinematic sources. The project includes the study of the cognitive mechanisms and volitional intentions of the exoskeleton wearer as well as other physical information provided from other sources. This paper is oriented on those studies related with the users' cognitive mechanisms during gait. The phenomena evaluated are the changes in the brain waves depending on the attention that a user is paying in the gait and the event-related potential evoked when an obstacle suddenly appear during walking. Initial experiments with healthy users provide encouraging results, obtaining an average value of 65,25% in the classification of four levels of attention and a potential related with the alertness state experienced by a user when an obstacle appears is characterized.