In many problem domains data may come from multiple sources (or views), such as video and audio from a camera or text on and links to a web page. These multiple views of the data are often not directly comparable to one another, and thus a principled method for their integration is warranted. In this paper we develop a new algorithm to leverage information from multiple views for unsupervised clustering by constructing a custom kernel. We generate a multipartite graph (with the number of parts given by the number of views) that induces a kernel we then use for spectral clustering. Our algorithm can be seen as a generalization of co-clustering and spectral clustering and a relative of Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis. We demonstrate the algorithm on four data sets: an illustrative artificial data set, synthetic fMRI data, voxels from an fMRI study, and a collection of web pages. Finally, we compare its performance to common alternatives.

Objective. Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems read and interpret brain activity directly from the brain. They can provide a means of communication or locomotion for patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases or stroke. However, non-stationarity of brain activity limits the reliable transfer of the algorithms that were trained during a calibration session to real-time BCI control. One source of non-stationarity is the user’s brain response to the BCI output (feedback), for instance, whether the BCI feedback is perceived as an error by the user or not. By taking such sources of non-stationarity into account, the reliability of the BCI can be improved. Approach. In this work, we demonstrate a real-time implementation of a hybrid motor imagery BCI combining the information from the motor imagery signal and the error-related brain activity simultaneously so as to gain benefit from both sources. Main results. We show significantly improved performance in real-time BCI control across 12 participants, compared to a conventional motor imagery BCI. The significant improvement is in terms of classification accuracy, target hit rate, subjective perception of control and information-transfer rate. Moreover, our offline analyses of the recorded EEG data show that the error-related brain activity provides a more reliable source of information than the motor imagery signal. Significance. This work shows, for the first time, that the error-related brain activity classifier compared to the motor imagery classifier is more consistent when trained on calibration data and tested during online control. This likely explains why the proposed hybrid BCI allows for a more reliable means of communication or rehabilitation for patients in need.

We used pattern classifiers to extract features related to recognition memory retrieval from the temporal information in single-trial electroencephalography (EEG) data during attempted memory retrieval. Two-class classification was conducted on correctly remembered trials with accurate context (or source) judgments vs. correctly rejected trials. The average accuracy for datasets recorded in a single session was 61% while the average accuracy for datasets recorded in two separate sessions was 56%. To further understand the basis of the classifier’s performance, two other pattern classifiers were trained on different pairs of behavioral conditions. The first of these was designed to use information related to remembering the item and the second to use information related to remembering the contextual information (or source) about the item. Mollison and Curran (2012) had earlier shown that subjects’ familiarity judgments contributed to improved memory of spatial contextual information but not of extrinsic associated color information. These behavioral results were similarly reflected in the event-related potential (ERP) known as the FN400 (an early frontal effect relating to familiarity) which revealed differences between correct and incorrect context memories in the spatial but not color conditions. In our analyses we show that a classifier designed to distinguish between correct and incorrect context memories, more strongly involves early activity (400–500 ms) over the frontal channels for the location distinctions, than for the extrinsic color associations. In contrast, the classifier designed to classify memory for the item (without memory for the context), had more frontal channel involvement for the color associated experiments than for the spatial experiments. Taken together these results argue that location may be bound more tightly with the item than an extrinsic color association. The multivariate classification approach also showed that trial-by-trial variation in EEG corresponding to these ERP components were predictive of subjects’ behavioral responses. Additionally, the multivariate classification approach enabled analysis of error conditions that did not have sufficient trials for standard ERP analyses. These results suggested that false alarms were primarily attributable to item memory (as opposed to memory of associated context), as commonly predicted, but with little previous corroborating EEG evidence.