A brain-computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a brain and an external device. BCIs provide an alternative communication and control channel to convey messages and commands from brain to the external world without using peripheral nerves and muscles. Such a technology may allow, in perspective, partial recovery of their degree of autonomy to patients with severe motor disabilities.

The goal of this special session "Advances in Brain Computer Interfaces" is to present a broad overview of state of the art approaches to brain-computer interfaces. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Invasive and non-invasive BCIs based on EEG, MEG, fMRI, NIRS, ECoG, neural spike trains etc
• Critical issues in EEG based BCIs, such as asynchronous BCI, co-adaptation between brain and machine, feedback in BCI, high dimensional control and so on.
• Pre-processing and feature extraction techniques for BCI systems
• Machine learning methods applied to BCI systems
• Protocols and evaluation methodologies for BCI systems
• Applications of BCI systems in rehabilitation, entertainment, robotics, spelling devices, cursor control, etc.

Important Dates

Paper Submission: *Dec 1, 2007
Acceptance Notification: Feb 1, 2008
Final Manuscript Due: Mar 1, 2008

*Upon numerous requests, a 2-week grace period will be given after the submission deadline. Late submissions after the grace period and before the 2008 New Year's Day may be considered only if time permits for review.

Paper Submission

Manuscripts should be prepared according to the standard format and page limit specified in IJCNN 2008:
6 pages limit 8 pages limit including figures, tables, graphs, references, etc. For more submission instructions, please see the WCCI submission page at: http://www.wcci2008.org/submission.htm.

Please make sure that you select
Conference = IJCNN 2008
Session = Special, then pick "Advances in Brain Computer Interfaces"

The IJCNN is the premier conference in the field of neural networks, and it is also one of the flagship conferences for the International Neural Network Society and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. All special session papers will be treated in the same way as regular papers. The conference proceedings of IJCNN have been continuously included in the EI Compendex Database and IEEE Xplore.

For latest news, please refer to http://www.wcci2008.org/.

Special Session Organizers

Yuanqing Li
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
Email: yqli2@i2r.a-star.edu.sg; auyqli@scut.edu.cn

Cuntai Guan
Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore
E-mail : ctguan@i2r.a-star.edu.sg

Shangkai Gao
Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, P.R. China
Email: gsk-dea@tsinghua.edu.cn

Andrzej Cichocki
Laboratory for Advanced Brain Signal Processing, Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, Japan
Email: cia@brain.riken.jp