Decoding the visual attention of an individual from electroencephalographic signals

A system for determining a focus of visual attention of an individual from electroencephalographic signals, the system comprising;

• a device for generating display signals, which is configured to:
• generate a set of at least one visual stimulus to be displayed based on at least one graphical object of a human-machine interface of a computational device, at least one elementary transformation, and a set of at least one modulation signal, a visual stimulus of the set of at least one visual stimulus being an animated graphical object obtained by applying to a graphical object a temporal succession of elementary transformations that is temporally parameterized by a corresponding modulation signal;
• and
• present the at least one visual stimulus in a display to the individual;
• and
• a real-time signal-processing device configured to:
• obtain a plurality of electroencephalographic signals produced by the individual while the individual is paying attention to the displayed at least one visual stimulus;
• obtain a reconstructed modulation signal by reconstructing a modulation signal from the plurality of electroencephalographic signals;
• compute a degree of statistical dependence between the reconstructed modulation signal and each modulation signal of said set of at least one modulation signal;
• and
• in response to identifying at least one visual stimulus corresponding to a modulation signal for which the degree of statistical dependence is higher than a first threshold, trigger one or more operations of the computational device.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions, that when executed by the computer, cause the computer to perform operations comprising:

• generating a set of at least one visual stimulus to be displayed from at least one graphical object of a human-machine interface of a computational device, from at least one elementary transformation and from a set of at least one modulation signal, a visual stimulus being an animated graphical object obtained by applying to a graphical object a temporal succession of elementary transformations that is temporally parameterized by a corresponding modulation signal;
• presenting the at least one visual stimulus in a display to the individual;
• recording a plurality of electroencephalographic signals produced by the individual while the individual is paying attention to the displayed at least one visual stimulus;
• and
• performing in real-time, operations comprising:
• reconstructing a modulation signal from the plurality of electroencephalographic signals produced by the individual in order to obtain a reconstructed modulation signal;
• computing a degree of statistical dependence between the reconstructed modulation signal and each modulation signal of the set of at least one modulation signal;
• and
• in response to identifying at least one visual stimulus corresponding to a modulation signal for which the degree of statistical dependence is higher than a first threshold, triggering one or more operations of the computational device.