Before you can train any commands you need to train a Neutral state. Your Neutral brain activity will be used as a contrast to your brain activity during your command training. What is most important is that you do not think about any of your Command thoughts during your Neutral training. Other than that, you can hang out relaxed and let your mind wander. For advice on training, visit our Tips and Tricks.

To train Neutral, click on the Train button that appears to the right of the Neutral box. You will then be asked to hold a Neutral state for 8 seconds. During this time the cube will not move, so do not think about any of your Command thoughts during these 8 seconds.

Every time you Accept a command and it gets added into your profile, this command will increase its level by one. Command levels appear beside the command box on the Mental Commands screen and are equal to the amount of Accepted trainings.

You have the choice to Accept or Reject each training that you do. Accepted trainings will be added into your current Training Profile and the profile will be immediately updated. Rejected trainings will be discarded and not added to your profile.

The first two trainings of each profile will seed the foundation of your profile. If you feel you are adequately able to hold your Command thought in your mind during each of these two trainings, select Accept. If not, you can select Reject and try again.

Our algorithm for Mental Commands works using pattern recognition and requires that you train at least one Neutral state and one Command state. The system learns to recognize the patterns of brain activity that are related to your Command state compared to your Neutral state. Though you can start using a profile after training a Command only one time, we highly recommend you do repeat trainings for each Command and for your Neutral state. The more training that you do, the better the system will be able to detect the pattern of brain activity associated with your Command thought AND the better you will get at learning how to recreate that thought in your mind.

We have associated the the Mental Commands inside EmotivBCI with the movements of a cube including Push, Pull, Left, Right, Up, Down, Rotate, Disappear. This way you can practice using your command inside the app in and get feedback that it is working or not. Outside of the application, however, you can associate these commands to any digital output you choose, even if they are not related to the movement of an object. For example, your “Up” command can be used to turn on the smart lights in your home using Node-RED.

After two command trainings, the app provides feedback on each training to help you identify a good training from a bad training and inform your decision as to Accept or Reject it. This feedback is displayed on a 1-100 scale and is based on how consistent the training you just did is with previous trainings in your profile.

Once you have trained Neutral you are ready to train your first Command. Commands are thoughts that you will recreate in your mind when you want to trigger the action associated with it. Your goal is to perform thoughts that are:

1. reproducible, so that you can create the same “brain state” as required, and

2. separable (if your profile contains more than one Command), so that the system’s machine learning algorithms can easily recognize each action and distinguish them from each other.

For advice on training, visit our . Once you have decided on the thought you will use for this action, you are ready to begin.

To train your first Command, click on the unlocked command box and select the type of command you would like to train. Once you have selected your preferred Command, click “Train”. You will then be asked to hold a hold the Command thought in your mind for 8 seconds. During this time the cube will move according to the action you selected.

If you get distracted during any training, you can click on "Cancel" under the timer to stop the training session. No data will be added to your profile in this case.

In this section:

If you would like to temporarily turn off one or more of the commands within your Training Profile, you can do so by toggling the switch to the left of those commands.

Turning a command OFF will adjust your Training Profile to only include the remaining commands. This will usually result in increased performance for the active commands. Use this feature if you want to use a subset of commands within a profile.

Toggle the switch again to turn the command back ON.

Note 1: You must have one command active at all times.

Note 2: Deactivating a command in EmotivBCI will deactivate it for other applications running on your computer (e.g. Node-RED).

The Brain Space Diagram gives you feedback on the quality of your Training Profile and can guide your training process. In the Brain Space Diagram, colored dots represent your Neutral state (pink) and each of your trained Commands for the current Training Profile. The further apart the dots are on the diagram, the better separated out the Commands are in your Training Profile and the easier you are likely to find it to trigger them independently. The closer they are to each other, the more similar they are and the harder you will find to trigger them in isolation.

The Brain Space Diagram gives you feedback on the quality of your Training Profile and can guide your training process. In the Brain Space Diagram, colored dots represent your Neutral state (pink) and each of your trained Commands for the current Training Profile. The further apart the dots are on the diagram, the better separated out the Commands are in your Training Profile and the easier you are likely to find it to trigger them independently. The closer they are to each other, the more similar they are and the harder you will find to trigger them in isolation.

The Brain Space Diagram will be updated once you click "Accept" after completing a Command training.

If you would like to delete all of your training data for a single Command you can do so by selecting a command you want to delete and clicking on the icon.

When asked, confirm your action by clicking “Yes, Delete Command” in the pop up.

You can choose to do your Mental Commands training in two different modes

1. Animated mode animates the cube the same way every time according to the action being trained ("Live training feedback" toggle OFF).

2. Live mode moves the cube during the training session according to how well you are activating that command. ("Live training feedback" toggle ON). This mode can be accessed once you have trained a command.

Use the "Live training feedback" toggle on the main training screen to switch between these two modes.

If you would like to adjust the sensitivity of individual Mental Commands in Live Mode you can do so by clicking on 'settings' icon in the Live Mode and adjusting the sliders against individual commands.

If you would like to adjust the sensitivity of individual Mental Commands in Live Mode you can do so by clicking on 'settings' icon in the Live Mode and adjusting the sliders against individual commands.

Moving the slider to the right (10) will increase the sensitivity of the command making it easier to trigger. Moving the slider to the left (1) will make the command harder to trigger.

To add a new Command to your Training Profile, click on the unlocked command box and select the type of command you would like to train. Once you have selected your preferred Command select it and click “Train”. You can add up to four Commands for every Training Profile.

WARNING: Adding more Commands to your profile makes controlling the Commands much more difficult. We do not recommend trying out more Commands until you are comfortable the the number you currently are working with. Learn more about working with multiple Commands in our .

Choosing your thought: The thought that you train on and use for your Mental Commands can be anything. They can be literal (i.e. you can try and focus on pushing the virtual box) or they can be as abstract as you like (i.e. where push is associated with visualizing a scene or counting backwards from 500 in steps of 7). The possibilities are endless. Different strategies work best for different people, so try a few out.

If you are training a profile with one command, you want to make that one command as strong and distinct as possible. One way to achieve this is to use something that is multi-modal - i.e. something that contains different sensory and kinematic (related to movements of your muscles) components all together. If you have a strong disposition toward any of these modalities (e.g. you are a musician and so can easily imagine auditory sounds), you may find focusing on this single modality works best for you.

If you are training a profile with multiple commands, you may find you get best results if each of your commands uses a single and different sensory or kinematic modality (e.g. one that is visual, one that is auditory and one that is kinematic). What is most important is that they are distinct from each other and you are able to recreate them accurately in your mind repeatedly.

You may also find that associating different hand gestures or postures with a Command can help to better reproduce them.

Multiple commands: The more Commands that are in a profile the harder it is to trigger them independently. For best results, we recommend becoming confident with one command before trying a profile with two, and for becoming confident with two commands before trying a profile with three, etc.

Training sequence: If you are training a profile with one command, we recommend that you alternate training of the Command with training of the Neutral state. This will provide the best contrast for your profile.

If you plan to develop a profile with multiple commands, we recommend adding in all of the Commands at an early stage in the training process, rather than perfecting one Command before adding in the others. This way you can, from the beginning, ensure that the Commands are well separated from each other and work well together. You may find that cycling through them in sequence for training gives you the best result.

Words of encouragement: Controlling machines with your mind is hard. Do not be discouraged if you are not able to master mind control right away. Being able to recreate a thought in your mind at will is something that take practice for most of us to learn. It is like learning how to generate certain patterns of brain activity to learn how to walk or talk. Practice certainly does help and you will likely find that with repeated trainings, your ability to trigger a command at will becomes much easier.

The ability to clear your mind of distracting thoughts while focusing on a particular one can be a great way to train your brain to have better focus in other situations. Indeed, some people use Mental Commands training to challenge and train their attentional control generally.

If you would like to try out the Commands you have trained already and see how those perform you can do so by accessing Live Mode. To access Live Mode simply click on the Live Mode button on the Mental Commands screen. Once inside Live Mode, the cube will respond to your brain activity in real time, based on your current Training Profile.

Power Meter

In Live Mode you will also see a power meter showing the real time detection of commands in your Profile. Since this meter does not include the animations and physics that the cube does, it is a more quantitative representation of your performance.