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From EEG to BCI: 100 years in 1 hour

In 1924 Hans Berger measured for the first time the electrical activity of the brain. In 1930 he published his revolutionary paper(s) about the "Elektrenkephalogramm des Menschen". He was a great scientist, but also a doctor and a tagalong in Nazi Germany..  Before and after the 2nd World War many more seminal discoveries followed, for example EEG activity changes during sleep, the link between abnormal activity and diseases such as epilepsy or depression, and the possibility to voluntarily change such activity via neurofeedback followed by the development of brain-computer interfaces for different interventions. During the decades it became clear that the electrical activity of the brain in different frequency bands and related topography is linked to different states of consciousness. By now we can easily distinguish coma from REM sleep from mind wandering from active wakefulness. But do we really know how the brain realizes the sense of self and how this may be linked to successful BCI operation? There are still secrets to discover.

Biography

Prof. Kübler, PhD, Biologist and Psychologist, is Associate Professor at the University of Würzburg, Institute of Psychology, and her major research topics within the field of BCI are psychological aspects, and neuroscientific basis of BCI control and studies with patients in the field. She is working on using neurofeedback for communication, rehabilitation, and therapy, i.e., for replacing and improving lost or impaired function. Currently she is investigating how humans learn to control BCI with tactually evoked potentials as input signal and how markers of consciousness are linked to BCI control.

Besides being an expert in the clinical application of BCI she is a certified trainer of mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based pain management. She is investigating different aspects of the mindfulness concept from basic questions on how to define mindfulness to mindfulness-based interventions in chronic disease, such as COPD and Fibromyalgia. In 2022 she was ranked by ResearchGate 37/100 best female scientists in Germany and 904/1000 worldwide.

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