IEEE INDICON 2015 1570172095

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Sweet and Sour Taste Classification Using EEG
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Based Brain Computer Interface
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Ismi Abidi*, Omar Farooq†, M M S Beg*
10   *Department of Computer Engineering
11   †Department of Electronics Engineering
12   Z H College of Engineering & Technology
13   Aligarh Muslim University
14   Aligarh, India
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Abstract— This work presents an EEG based brain computer tastes takes place in the parietal region [8]. In [9], classification
interface for differentiating between sweet and sour tastes. For has been performed to differentiate between sweet and salty
17   this purpose, eight channels EEG was recorded from ten healthy taste. EEG from 2 electrode positions (C3 and C4) was
18   subjects when they hold the tastants in their mouth. Different recorded from 8 different subjects. Using AGR coefficients,
19   features extracted from the signals were kurtosis, skewness, significant differentiation among sweet, salty and distilled
20   energy and wavelet entropy. Extracted features are classified water was seen.
21   using a linear discriminant classifier. The results show that
22   energy and wavelet entropy were able to classify the tastes with Human response to taste using EEG was estimated in [10].
23   greater than 98% accuracy while the other two features barely It has performed taste elicited as well as recall elicited
gives the 60% accuracy. Analysis was also carried out to evaluate classification on seven subjects. EEG was recorded from 6
24   the best time interval after the stimulus was given. It was found scalp positions (AF7, AF8, F3, F4, T7 and T8). Signal features
25   that the best discriminatory response in the EEG signal based on relevant to the emotions were extracted using Common Spatial
26   the extracted features was between 20-30 s after the stimulus. Patterns. They have used support vector machine to classify
27   among different tastes. For taste elicitation, average
28   Keywords—Brain Computer Interface, EEG, wavelet entropy, classification accuracy for five subjects exceeds 70%. The
29   energy results obtained for recall elicitation were better than taste
30   I. INTRODUCTION elicitation.
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Brain computer Interface (BCI) provides a direct way of In this paper, EEG has been used to acquire brain signals
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communication between a computer system and brain, without from ten normal healthy subjects. EEG gives the immediate
33   response of the subjects to the given tastants as fluctuations in
the use of normal peripheral pathways of human being [1]. The
34   brain signals. To understand the response of brain to different
electrical activities of brain can be measured using invasive or
35   non-invasive techniques like Electrocorticograph, tastes the two tastants are selected, sugar cube (sweet) and
36   Electroencephalograph (EEG), Functional Near InfraRed lemon extract (sour), belonging to two different taste
37   Spectroscopy. EEG is the most popular and widely used categories. The acquired data have been filtered to remove the
38   method for acquiring brain signal due to its low cost, out of band frequencies and line noise. Several statistical
39   portability and ease of use. In EEG, electrodes are placed on features have been calculated to study the EEG data. Linear
40   the scalp of subject to record brain signals. These signals are of classifier was used for feature classification and finally the
41   low magnitude ranging from 0.5 to 100 µV. On the basis of performance of the system was measured in terms of accuracy.
42   frequency range, the brain waves are categorized into five Fig. 1 shows the steps involved in the presented work.
43   categories: delta (0.4-4 Hz), theta (4-7 Hz), alpha (8-13 Hz), Section II discusses the required system components and
44   beta (13-30 Hz) and gamma (32-100 Hz) [2][3]. With the the method for feature extraction and classification techniques.
45   advent of new technologies and devices, development of BCI Results are discussed in Section III. Finally, we conclude our
46   system has seen a whole new change. It provides work with future directions in Section IV.
47   communication and control [1] to the patients suffering from
locked-in syndrome, brainstem stroke, etc. with the help of BCI
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based cursor control [4], P300 speller [5], and robotic
49   wheelchair. BCI systems can also be used for real time seizure
50   detection [6]. It is used for medical applications, rehabilitation
51   and recreation like brain painting [7], Mind reader
52   GoogleGlass, Star Wars Science Force Trainer.
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54   Human brain responds to different taste stimulus
differently. The gustatory system identifies the taste qualities
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and their hedonic characteristic. Parietal region deals with the
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perception and differentiation. Similarly temporal region Fig. 1. The block diagram shows the different stages involved in a BCI for
57   processes different emotions [3]. The processing of different classifying sweet and sour tastants.
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978-1-4673-6540-6/15/$31.00 © 2015 IEEE
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 the rest and taste clearance was 1 minute. For this duration, no
recording was conducted. For another 1 minute, recording was
conducted for sour taste. Then again, some rest and water was
given. It is shown graphically in Fig. 3.
For each subject, more than one trial was conducted. All
the processing of raw EEG signals was conducted using
MATLAB.
C. Preprocessing
Several types of artefacts like line noise, dc offset, eye
blinks are available in EEG signal which can be removed by
preprocessing. As the subjects were asked to close their eyes
and there was no movement involved, so the predominant
alpha rhythms (8-13 Hz) were selected for filtering. To filter
out the frequency contents from 8-13 Hz, a finite impulse
Fig. 2. Snapshot taken while recording for sweet and sour classification response bandpass was used. While recording, dc offset was
present in the signal, it can be removed by achieving zero mean
II. MATERIALS AND METHODOLOGY signals. For each channel, the mean of the signal was evaluated
A. Subjects with a window of size 1 sec. The mean so obtained was
subtracted from all the samples to get a zero mean.
Ten subjects, 9 males and 1 female aged from 19 to 45
years participated in this study with consent. None of them D. Feature Extraction
have any prior experience as well as no one reported to have In order to explore discriminatory features, histogram of
the gustatory disorder. Each recording session of a subject the preprocessed signal corresponding to the two tastes, was
lasted for about half an hour. Fig. 2 shows the recording studied for each subject. Histogram gives the statistical
session conducted in lab. viewpoint of the signal. It has been observed that histogram of
B. Data Acquisition each signal is skewed. Although, skewness is in the same
The system consists of two components: an EEG direction for sweet and sour. There is a large peak at the
acquisition device and a computer system. The EEG was centre. Fig. 4 shows the histogram plot of the single trial of a
recorded from NeuroElectrics Enobio device which captures 8- sample subject. Also, it can be seen from the plot that dynamic
channel electric potentials from the scalp of the user wearing range of the EEG signal corresponding to sweet tastant is
an EEG cap. The two components were connected through more as compared to sour. This implies that signal energy will
Bluetooth. The EEG signal was sampled at 500Hz. be a good candidate for a discriminatory feature. Finally
wavelet entropy, a measure of degree of randomness was also
EEG signals were captured using eight dry electrode used.
systems. The electrodes were placed on the following head For each extracted features, every recorded signal of 60s
positions: T8, T7, P8, P7, PO7, Pz, P3, and P4 in the 10-10
was divided into six segments of 10s. For each segment, a
international system [11]. Table I shows the mapping of
channel indices to their position on the scalp. window of one second was selected and different features
have been extracted per second per channel.
Subjects were asked to close their eyes during the Kurtosis of a time series data gives a measure of how
recording. In each trial, sugar cube and lemon extract were outlier prone a distribution is. It is defined as [12]:
given to the subjects as tastants. For single trial, subjects were / ∑
(1)
asked to hold the sweet tastant in the mouth for the duration of
1 minute. After that, they had to clear their mouth with water where, is the sample value of signal, is the total number
and a rest was given to the subjects. The total time given for of samples
Skewness measures the degree of deviation from the
TABLE I. EACH ELECTRODE POSITION IS REPRESENTED BY A CHANNEL symmetry of the data around the sample mean. It is
NUMBER represented as [12]:
/ ∑
(2)
Channel Number Electrode Position
where, is the sample value of signal, is the total number
ch1 T8 of samples
ch2 P8
ch3 P4
ch4 Pz
ch5 P3
ch6 PO7
ch7 P7
ch8 P8
Fig. 3. Protocol for recording EEG signal for the two taste for a single trial.
For the next trial, the process is repeated as shown with a loop.

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 TABLE II. LINEAR CLASSIFICAATION ACCURACY CONSIDERING
KURTOSIS OF ALL THE CHANNELS AS FEATURE
Percentagee classification accuracy
Subjects for different time period
0-10s 10-20s 200-30s 30-40s 40-50s 50-60s
Sub1 35.53 51.71 60.88 34.80 41.17 43.21
Sub2 48.81 49.83 56.34 58.51 34.94 50.47
Sub3 47.13 51.23 36.46 57.48 57.17 47.73
Sub4 57.04 46.21 58.96 43.38 47.98 58.63
Sub5 43.81 50.08 50.18 62.73 60.75 39.97
Sub6 60.07 48.59 50.01 45.23 47.11 55.78
Sub7 34.44 65.23 51.44 40.54 49.48 47.04
Sub8 46.20 35.82 55.62 57.03 57.78 57.43
Sub9 56.88 48.50 50.06 56.04 50.53 46.47
Sub10 61.64 38.67 61.32 57.06 61.65 59.16

TABLE III. LINEAR CLASSIFICAATION ACCURACY CONSIDERING

SKEWNESS ALL THE CHANNELS AS FEATURE
E
(a)
Percentagee classification accuracy
Subjects for different time period
0-10s 10-20s 200-30s 30-40s 40-50s 50-60s
Sub1 45.85 63.55 52.03 48.38 49.98 45.83
Sub2 50.32 63.04 66.09 54.59 49.09 63.10
Sub3 62.92 63.74 60.07 64.02 65.81 73.54
Sub4 62.54 65.14 65.65 64.26 74.16 84.97
Sub5 37.01 55.38 4
48.74 60.51 62.20 34.02
Sub6 75.32 57.54 58.59 62.04 55.93 59.29
Sub7 39.12 57.20 55.10 38.53 54.58 48.33
Sub8 54.29 47.84 55.13 72.61 54.26 56.73
Sub9 77.58 68.84 65.12 72.70 61.18 36.34
Sub10 59.98 41.20 57.38 62.82 50.22 54.57

To validate the performannce of the classifier, data was

randomly permuted, then first 70%
7 of the data was selected as
training set and the rest as test set. This process is repeated
(b) 1000 times which gave 10000 values of accuracy. Average
computation provides the finall accuracy of the classifier. The
Fig. 4. Histogram for the two taste of a sample subjectt. a) Single trial of sour
tastant. b) Single trial of sweet tastant classification accuracy obtaineed for each subject have been
shown in Tables II - V. Form Table II, it can be seen that the
Different tastes may cause different level of neural accuracy for kurtosis as a featture lies between 34 and 65 %.
activities in brain which results into differrent EEG signals. The calculated accuracies are not consistent across subjects.
This results into different energy, so it was chosen as one of Similar is the case with skew wness, which shows a slightly
the features for classification. improved accuracy between 344 to 85 % (Table III). In both the
cases, the maximum average accuracy
a is obtained around 20-
Energy of any signal is defined as follow
ws:
40s. When the feature is channged to energy, there is a great
∑ | | (3) improvement in classification accuracy for every subject as
where, is the sample value of signal, is the total number well as consistency can also be seen across subjects (Table
of samples IV).Finally the feature chosen is wavelet entropy. Basically, it
Wavelet Entropy provides the weighted sum of energy. It is the weighted sum of energiees. It follows the same trend as
can be defined as follows [13][14]: energy for classification accuraacy with 99.86 to 100 % (Table
_ ∑ (4) V). It is also consistent in its
i performance irrespective of
where, is the coefficient of signal s in an orthonormal basis subject. On comparing the ressults, statistical features kurtosis
function, is the total number of samples. and skewness could not perforrm well. It can be verified using
Linear discriminant classifier [15] haas been used to histogram where the peaks of the histogram for the two taste
classify between sweet and sour tastes. does not vary significantly and results into the poor
performance for kurtosis. Simillarly, the histogram plots for the
III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
N two tastes have been skewedd in the same direction which
The results using eight features, kurtosis,, skewness, energy suggests that skewness might m not be beneficial for
and wavelet entropy of all the channels, werew calculated for classification. Based on perfoormance, average accuracy for
different time intervals. A linear discriminaant analysis based energy and wavelet entropy has h been selected for the time
classifier was used for sweet and sour classifiication. based analysis. On plotting the average accuracy with respect

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TABLE IV. LINEAR CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY CONSIDERING ENERGY
OF ALL THE CHANNELS AS FEATURE
Percentage classification accuracy
Subjects for different time period
0-10s 10-20s 20-30s 30-40s 40-50s 50-60s
Sub1 99.69 100.00 100.00 100.00 98.97 99.38
Sub2 99.93 100.00 99.99 99.98 99.64 99.39
Sub3 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub4 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub5 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub6 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub7 100.00 99.99 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub8 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub9 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub10 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 99.98
Fig. 5. Average accuracy for different time intervals for energy and wavelet
entropy feature

TABLE V. LINEAR CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY CONSIDERING

WAVELET ENTROPY OF ALL THE CHANNELS AS FEATURE
Percentage classification accuracy
Subjects for different time period
0-10s 10-20s 20-30s 30-40s 40-50s 50-60s
Sub1 99.86 100.00 100.00 100.00 99.08 99.14
Sub2 99.90 100.00 100.00 99.99 99.76 99.34
Sub3 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub4 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub5 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub6 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub7 100.00 99.98 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub8 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub9 100.00 100.00 99.98 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sub10 100.00 100.00 100.00 99.99 99.98 100.00

to different time segments, the time segment of 20-40s
corresponds to maximum achieved accuracy. Considering only
the 20-30s of data, average accuracy has been plotted for
features energy and wavelet entropy. Although, a direct
comparison could not be performed between Park et al.’s work
[10] and the work presented in this paper. Fig. 6 shows the bar
graph of average accuracy for the classification of sugar and
lemon using energy and wavelet entropy as a feature. The next
two bars correspond to average accuracy for classifying
sucrose-NaCl and sucrose-mustard. The classification
accuracies obtained by Park [10] for sucrose-NaCl and
sucrose-mustard combination for the seven subjects were in
between 59.8 to 86 % and 65 to 100 % respectively. The
average accuracy was calculated for the two taste combination
separately. It can be seen from Fig. 6, that the accuracy
obtained using energy and wavelet entropy as a feature is far
greater than the accuracy obtained in [10].
IV. CONCLUSION
This study has implemented a BCI system using EEG as
input modality for taste detection. The EEG signal was filtered
for alpha rhythms (8-13 Hz). Four features namely kurtosis,
skewness, energy and wavelet entropy have been extracted per
channel to distinguish sweet and sour tastes. An average
accuracy of 50%, 58%, 99.94%, and 99.95% have been
Fig. 6. Average accuracy plot for different tastants ( Sugar cube(Sc) and
Lemon(Le), Sucrose(Su) and Nacl, Sucrose and Mustard(Mt) ) and features
used.
obtained for the four features respectively. It can be seen that
the energy and wavelet entropy gives the best performance for
classification. Since this study used eight features to classify
sweet and sour tastes, further work can be done to reduce the
dimension of feature vector. Also, the number of subjects can
also be increased.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank all the subjects who
participated in the experiment, without them this work might
not be possible.
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