EEG Classification Research Articles

EEG classification using a simple CNN model for imagined and executed motor signals

EEG classification using a simple CNN model for imagined and executed motor signals

A class alignment network based on self-attention for cross-subject EEG classification.

Due to the inherent variability in EEG signals across different individuals, domain adaptation and adversarial learning strategies are being progressively utilized to develop subject-specific classification models by leveraging data from other subjects. These approaches primarily focus on domain alignment and tend to overlook the critical task-specific class boundaries. This oversight can result in weak correlation between the extracted features and categories. To address these challenges, we propose a novel model that uses the known information from multiple subjects to bolster EEG classification for an individual subject through adversarial learning strategies. Our method begins by extracting both shallow and attention-driven deep features from EEG signals. Subsequently, we employ a class discriminator to encourage the same-class features from different domains to converge while ensuring that the different-class features diverge. This is achieved using our proposed discrimination loss function, which is designed to minimize the feature distance for samples of the same class across different domains while maximizing it for those from different classes. Additionally, our model incorporates two parallel classifiers that are harmonious yet distinct and jointly contribute to decision-making. Extensive testing on two publicly available EEG datasets has validated our model's efficacy and superiority.

Exploration of an intrinsically explainable self-attention based model for prototype generation on single-channel EEG sleep stage classification.

Prototype-based methods in deep learning offer interpretable explanations for decisions by comparing inputs to typical representatives in the data. This study explores the adaptation of SESM, a self-attention-based prototype method successful in electrocardiogram (ECG) tasks, for electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. The architecture is evaluated on sleep stage classification, exploring its efficacy in predicting stages with single-channel EEG. The model achieves comparable test accuracy compared to EEGNet, a state-of-the-art black-box architecture for EEG classification. The generated prototypical components are exaimed qualitatively and using the area over the perterbation curve (AOPC) indicate some alignment with expected bio-markers for different sleep stages such as alpha spindles and slow waves in non-REM sleep, but the results are severely limited by the model's ability to only extract and present information in the time-domain. Ablation studies are used to explore the impact of kernel size, number of heads, and diversity threshold on model performance and explainability. This study represents the first application of a self-attention based prototype method to EEG data and provides a step forward in explainable AI for EEG data analysis.

Classification of EEG evoked in 2D and 3D virtual reality: traditional machine learning versus deep learning

Backgrounds. Virtual reality (VR) simulates real-life events and scenarios and is widely utilized in education, entertainment, and medicine. VR can be presented in two dimensions (2D) or three dimensions (3D), with 3D VR offering a more realistic and immersive experience. Previous research has shown that electroencephalogram (EEG) profiles induced by 3D VR differ from those of 2D VR in various aspects, including brain rhythm power, activation, and functional connectivity. However, studies focused on classifying EEG in 2D and 3D VR contexts remain limited.Methods. A 56-channel EEG was recorded while visual stimuli were presented in 2D and 3D VR. The recorded EEG signals were classified using two machine learning approaches: traditional machine learning and deep learning. In the traditional approach, features such as power spectral density (PSD) and common spatial patterns (CSP) were extracted, and three classifiers-support vector machines (SVM), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), and random forests (RF)-were used. For the deep learning approach, a specialized convolutional neural network, EEGNet, was employed. The classification performance of these methods was then compared.Results. In terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, the deep learning method outperformed traditional machine learning approaches. Specifically, the classification accuracy using the EEGNet deep learning model reached up to 97.86%.Conclusions. EEGNet-based deep learning significantly outperforms conventional machine learning methods in classifying EEG signals induced by 2D and 3D VR. Given EEGNet's design for EEG-based brain-computer interfaces (BCI), this superior classification performance suggests that it can enhance the application of 3D VR in BCI systems.

A Cross-Attention-Based Class Alignment Network for Cross-Subject EEG Classification in a Heterogeneous Space.

Domain adaptation (DA) techniques have emerged as a pivotal strategy in addressing the challenges of cross-subject classification. However, traditional DA methods are inherently limited by the assumption of a homogeneous space, requiring that the source and target domains share identical feature dimensions and label sets, which is often impractical in real-world applications. Therefore, effectively addressing the challenge of EEG classification under heterogeneous spaces has emerged as a crucial research topic. We present a comprehensive framework that addresses the challenges of heterogeneous spaces by implementing a cross-domain class alignment strategy. We innovatively construct a cross-encoder to effectively capture the intricate dependencies between data across domains. We also introduce a tailored class discriminator accompanied by a corresponding loss function. By optimizing the loss function, we facilitate the aggregation of features with corresponding classes between the source and target domains, while ensuring that features from non-corresponding classes are dispersed. Extensive experiments were conducted on two publicly available EEG datasets. Compared to advanced methods that combine label alignment with transfer learning, our method demonstrated superior performance across five heterogeneous space scenarios. Notably, in four heterogeneous label space scenarios, our method outperformed the advanced methods by an average of 7.8%. Moreover, in complex scenarios involving both heterogeneous label spaces and heterogeneous feature spaces, our method outperformed the state-of-the-art methods by an average of 4.1%. This paper presents an efficient model for cross-subject EEG classification under heterogeneous spaces, which significantly addresses the challenges of EEG classification within heterogeneous spaces, thereby opening up new perspectives and avenues for research in related fields.

Riding Feeling Recognition Based on Multi-Head Self-Attention LSTM for Driverless Automobile

With the emergence of driverless technology, passenger ride comfort has become an issue of concern. In recent years, driving fatigue detection and braking sensation evaluation based on EEG signals have received more attention, and analyzing ride comfort using EEG signals is also a more intuitive method. However, it is still a challenge to find an effective method or model to evaluate passenger comfort. In this paper, we propose a long- and short-term memory network model based on a multiple self-attention mechanism for passenger comfort detection. By applying the multiple attention mechanism to the feature extraction process, more efficient classification results are obtained. The results show that the long- and short-term memory network using the multi-head self-attention mechanism is efficient in decision making along with higher classification accuracy. In conclusion, the classifier based on the multi-head attention mechanism proposed in this paper has excellent performance in EEG classification of different emotional states, and has a broad development prospect in brain-computer interaction.

Single-Channel Sleep EEG Classification Method Based on LSTM and Hidden Markov Model

Background: The single-channel sleep EEG has the advantages of convenient collection, high-cost performance, and easy daily use, and it has been widely used in the classification of sleep stages. Methods: This paper proposes a single-channel sleep EEG classification method based on long short-term memory and a hidden Markov model (LSTM-HMM). First, the single-channel EEG is decomposed using wavelet transform (WT), and multi-domain features are extracted from the component signals to characterize the EEG characteristics fully. Considering the temporal nature of sleep stage changes, this paper uses a multi-step time series as the input for the model. After that, the multi-step time series features are input into the LSTM. Finally, the HMM improves the classification results, and the final prediction results are obtained. Results: A complete experiment was conducted on the Sleep-EDFx dataset. The results show that the proposed method can extract deep information from EEG and make full use of the sleep stage transition rule. The proposed method shows the best performance in single-channel sleep EEG classification; the accuracy, macro average F1 score, and kappa are 82.71%, 0.75, and 0.76, respectively. Conclusions: The proposed method can realize single-channel sleep EEG classification and provide a reference for other EEG classifications.

A novel approach to detecting epileptic patients: complex network-based EEG classification

Abstract Detection of epileptic seizures is important for early diagnosis and treatment. It is known that the behavioral patterns of the brain in electroencephalogram (EEG) signals have huge and complex fluctuations. Diagnosing epilepsy by analyzing signals are costly process. Various methods are used to classify epileptic seizures. However, the inadequacy of these approaches in classifying signals makes it difficult to diagnose epilepsy. Complex network science produces effective solutions for analyzing interrelated structures. Using methods based on complex network analysis, it is possible to EEG signals analyze the relationship between signals and perform a classification process. In this study proposes a novel approach for classifying epileptic seizures by utilizing complex network science. In addition, unlike the studies in the literature, classification processes were carried out with lower dimensional signals by using 1-s EEG signals instead of 23.6-s full-size EEG signals. Using the topological properties of the EEG signal converted into a complex network, the classification process has been performed with the Jaccard Index method. The success of the classification process with the Jaccard Index was evaluated using Accuracy, F1 Score, Recall, and K-Fold metrics. In the results obtained, the signals of individuals with epileptic seizures were separated with an accuracy rate of 98.15%.

Assessing the influence of latency variability on EEG classifiers - a case study of face repetition priming

AbstractData-driven strategies have been widely used to distinguish experimental effects on single-trial EEG signals. However, how latency variability, such as within-condition jitter or latency shifts between conditions, affects the performance of EEG classifiers has not been well investigated. Without explicitly considering and disentangling such attributes of single trials, neural network-based classifiers have limitations in measuring their contributions. Inspired by domain knowledge of subcomponent latency and amplitude from traditional cognitive neuroscience, this study applies a stepwise latency correction method on single trials to control for their contributions to classifier behavior. As a case study demonstrating the value of this method, we measure repetition priming effects of faces, which induce large reaction time differences, latency shifts, and amplitude effects in averaged event-related potentials. The results show that within-condition jitter negatively impacts classifier performance, but between-condition latency shifts improve accuracy, whereas genuine amplitude differences have no significant influence. While demonstrated in the case of priming effects, this methodology can be generalized to experiments involving many kinds of time-varying signals to account for the contributions of latency variability to classifier performance.

Unsupervised multi-source domain adaptation via contrastive learning for EEG classification

Individual differences in electroencephalography (EEG) present significant challenges for subject-independent EEG classification in brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). Existing domain adaptation methods often address individual differences by merging all source domains indistinguishably into a single source and aligning features between this aggregate source and the target domain. Neglecting the relationships between different source domains would hinder the model’s adaptability and generalization. Therefore, we propose a method called Contrastive Learning-based Unsupervised multi-source Domain Adaptation (CLUDA) for learning subject-independent representations in motor imagery. Our method not only aligns the conditional distributions of each source domain with the target domain but also reduces discrepancies among the source domains using contrastive learning, thus learning more generalized domain-invariant representations. Specifically, CLUDA effectively eliminates semantic variances by maximizing the similarity between positive pairs (same class) and minimizing the similarity between negative pairs (different classes) across subjects. Finally, we validated CLUDA on four motor imagery datasets and consistently achieved state-of-the-art performance.

An SCA-based classifier for motor imagery EEG classification

Efficient and accurate multi-class classification of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals poses a significant challenge in the development of motor imagery-based brain–computer interface (MI-BCI). Drawing inspiration from the sine cosine algorithm (SCA), a widely employed swarm intelligence algorithm for optimization problems, we proposed a novel population-based classification algorithm for EEG signals in this article. To fully leverage the characteristics contained in EEG signals, multi-scale sub-signals were constructed in terms of temporal windows and spectral bands simultaneously, and the common spatial pattern (CSP) features were extracted from each sub-signal. Subsequently, we integrated the multi-center optimal vectors mechanism into the classical SCA, resulting in the development of a multi-center SCA (MCSCA) classifier. During the classification stage, the label was assigned to the test trials by evaluating the Euclidean distance between their feature vectors and each optimal vector in MCSCA. Additionally, the weights of feature vectors were exploited to select the sub-signal of specific temporal windows and spectral bands for feature reduction, thereby declining computational effort and eliminating data redundancy. To validate the performance of the MCSCA classifier, we conducted four-class classification experiments using the BCI Competition IV dataset 2a, achieving an average classification accuracy of 71.89%. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm offers a novel and effective approach for EEG classification.

Cramer Distance: A Deep Learning Approach for Better Epileptic Seizure Prediction

Epilepsy is a neurological condition that is found in most people all over the world, and the ability to accurately anticipate seizures in epileptic patients has a significant impact on both their level of protection and their overall quality of life. This research proposes a unique patient specific seizure prediction approach based on Deep Learning (DL) using long-term scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings to predict seizure onset. Preictal brain states should be adequately detected and differentiated from the prevalent interictal brain states as early as possible to make this technology acceptable for real-time use. A single automated system has been designed for the Features Extraction (FE) and classification processes. The raw EEG signal that has not been pre-processed is considered the input to the system, and the signal is further reduced using subsequent computations. An innovative reconstruction approach using Variational Auto-Encoder Generative Adversarial Networks (VAE+C+GAN) with the Cramer Distance (CD) and a Temporal-Spatial-Frequency (TSF) loss function is presented in this research work. The machine that discriminates receives instructions to differentiate between created tests and actual samples, while the generator is verified to produce false samples that the discriminator does not recognize as fake. The proposed VAE+C+GAN’s experimental results have been examined, and a classification accuracy of 95% has been achieved. According to the experiment's findings, the VAE-C-GAN performs better than the current EEG classification system and has excellent potential for real-time applications.

Epileptic seizure prediction via multidimensional transformer and recurrent neural network fusion

BackgroundEpilepsy is a prevalent neurological disorder in which seizures cause recurrent episodes of unconsciousness or muscle convulsions, seriously affecting the patient’s work, quality of life, and health and safety. Timely prediction of seizures is critical for patients to take appropriate therapeutic measures. Accurate prediction of seizures remains a challenge due to the complex and variable nature of EEG signals. The study proposes an epileptic seizure model based on a multidimensional Transformer with recurrent neural network(LSTM-GRU) fusion for seizure classification of EEG signals.MethodologyFirstly, a short-time Fourier transform was employed in the extraction of time-frequency features from EEG signals. Second, the extracted time-frequency features are learned using the Multidimensional Transformer model. Then, LSTM and GRU are then used for further learning of the time and frequency characteristics of the EEG signals. Next, the output features of LSTM and GRU are spliced and categorized using the gating mechanism. Subsequently, seizure prediction is conducted.ResultsThe model was tested on two datasets: the Bonn EEG dataset and the CHB-MIT dataset. On the CHB-MIT dataset, the average sensitivity and average specificity of the model were 98.24% and 97.27%, respectively. On the Bonn dataset, the model obtained about 99% and about 98% accuracy on the binary classification task and the tertiary upper classification task, respectively.ConclusionThe findings of the experimental investigation demonstrate that our model is capable of exploiting the temporal and frequency characteristics present within EEG signals.

Automated recognition of mental cognitive workload through nonlinear EEG analysis

Nowadays, with the remarkable advancements in detection instruments and artificial intelligence, there has been extensive utilization of human mental state monitoring in various domains. Few studies have explored how nonlinear analysis methods can detect cognitive workload despite the complex nature of EEG signals and advancements in signal processing techniques. In addition, the fuzziness of human mental conditions makes the need to use fuzzy engineering tools tangible in this field. Therefore, this investigation aimed to develop a decision support algorithm to improve previous efforts for the classification of task EEG and resting through machine learning algorithms. Various nonlinear features were calculated from all 19 EEG channels: Hurst exponent, Lempel–Ziv complexity, detrended fluctuation analysis, Higuchi fractal dimension, Katz fractal dimension, permutation entropy, singular value decomposition entropy, Petrosian fractal dimension, sample entropy, and Lyapunov exponent. During the classification step, a newly developed EPC-FC (Expert per Class Fuzzy Classifier) is introduced, utilizing an ensemble framework with specialized sub-classifiers for identifying a particular condition. By training sub-classifiers with the negative correlation learning (NCL) approach, the EPC-FC is designed to be exceptionally adaptable. Additionally, the separation of sub-classifiers within each class provides versatility and clarity to the system’s design. The proposed approach based on fuzzy systems and nonlinear analyses was applied to EEG data for mental workload recognition, which provides an excellent accuracy of 98.50% and an F1-score of 98.56% which is much higher than previous findings in this field. Also, the obtained results indicate that utilizing the proposed EPC-FC classifier maintains a consistently high accuracy exceeding 90% across various levels of SNRs. The obtained results proved the high potential of nonlinear analysis to detect cognitive states of the brain, which is consistent with the nonlinear and fuzzy nature of EEG data. Other nonlinear approaches should be considered for future studies to improve the current results.

Epileptic EEG classification via deep learning-based strange attractor

Electroencephalography is commonly exploited in recording brains’ electrical activities for revealing the symptoms of various neurological diseases, e.g., epileptic seizures. We hypothesize that its capability primarily comes from the information it captures from the brain, which is supposed to be a chaotic dynamical system. Therefore, seizure detection in clinical practice could benefit from strange attractor reconstruction from time series in classifying non-ictal and ictal epileptic seizures. We propose a deep learning architecture and the loss function in a latent space to implement the reconstruction. By leveraging the proposed deep model, the hidden coordinates can be derived from a low-dimensional time series or univariate time series (e.g., Electroencephalography). Furthermore, added variables can extract more features from the reconstructed dynamical system. The proposed pipeline is evaluated by using a publicly available epileptic seizure database. Experimental results demonstrated the promising outcome of the proposed approach.

MSS-JDA: Multi-source self-selected joint domain adaptation method based on cross-subject EEG emotion recognition

The electroencephalogram (EEG) is widely used to identify different emotional states. However, cross-subject emotion recognition based on EEG data is challenging due to physiological differences among participants. Many studies have proposed using multi-source domain adaptation methods to address cross-subject issues and have achieved promising results. multi-source domain adaptation involves constructing independent branches for EEG data from multiple subjects, using one-to-one domain adaptation, and extracting domain-specific features, followed by reasoning through multiple branches. However, a current practical obstacle is the increasing computational time cost as the number of source domains grows. Moreover, too many source domains may lead to domain shift issues. To address these challenges, we propose a novel emotion recognition method based on Multi-Source Domain Branch Self-Selected Joint Domain Adaptation (MSS-JDA). Initially, we construct a shared feature extractor for multiple source domain branches to extract common low-level features. Next, we use a one-to-one associated joint adaptation method to extract features specific to each domain. During training, our method of multi-source domain branch self-selection, guided by prior knowledge in the early training phase, prunes source domain branches that deviate significantly from the target domain, retaining only a certain number of source domain branches close to the target domain for continued training. Finally, domain-specific features are input into their respective classifiers to obtain N predictions, and their average is taken as the final result. Extensive experiments on the SEED and SEED-IV datasets demonstrate that the MSS-JDA model achieves accuracy and standard deviation scores of 93.78%, 3.39 and 78.93%, 7.39 respectively, surpassing most existing models. The experiments indicate that the proposed MSS-JDA method improves the accuracy of EEG emotion recognition classification, thus benefiting practical applications in EEG classification.

Integrating Electroencephalography Source Localization and Residual Convolutional Neural Network for Advanced Stroke Rehabilitation.

Motor impairments caused by stroke significantly affect daily activities and reduce quality of life, highlighting the need for effective rehabilitation strategies. This study presents a novel approach to classifying motor tasks using EEG data from acute stroke patients, focusing on left-hand motor imagery, right-hand motor imagery, and rest states. By using advanced source localization techniques, such as Minimum Norm Estimation (MNE), dipole fitting, and beamforming, integrated with a customized Residual Convolutional Neural Network (ResNetCNN) architecture, we achieved superior spatial pattern recognition in EEG data. Our approach yielded classification accuracies of 91.03% with dipole fitting, 89.07% with MNE, and 87.17% with beamforming, markedly surpassing the 55.57% to 72.21% range of traditional sensor domain methods. These results highlight the efficacy of transitioning from sensor to source domain in capturing precise brain activity. The enhanced accuracy and reliability of our method hold significant potential for advancing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in neurorehabilitation. This study emphasizes the importance of using advanced EEG classification techniques to provide clinicians with precise tools for developing individualized therapy plans, potentially leading to substantial improvements in motor function recovery and overall patient outcomes. Future work will focus on integrating these techniques into practical BCI systems and assessing their long-term impact on stroke rehabilitation.

Neurovisual Mapping: Image-Based EEG Analysis and Classification of Motor Imagery Patterns for BCI Applications

Neurovisual Mapping: Image-Based EEG Analysis and Classification of Motor Imagery Patterns for BCI Applications

Transfer Learning and Deep Neural Networks for Robust Intersubject Hand Movement Detection from EEG Signals

In this research, five systems were developed to classify four distinct motor functions—forward hand movement (FW), grasp (GP), release (RL), and reverse hand movement (RV)—from EEG signals, using the WAY-EEG-GAL dataset where participants performed a sequence of hand movements. During preprocessing, band-pass filtering was applied to remove artifacts and focus on the mu and beta frequency bands. The initial system, a preliminary study model, explored the overall framework of EEG signal processing and classification, utilizing time-domain features such as variance and frequency-domain features such as alpha and beta power, with a KNN model for classification. Insights from this study informed the development of a baseline system, which innovatively combined the common spatial patterns (CSP) method with continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for feature extraction and employed a GoogLeNet classifier with transfer learning. This system classified six unique pairs of events derived from the four motor functions, achieving remarkable accuracy, with the highest being 99.73% for the GP–RV pair and the lowest 80.87% for the FW–GP pair in intersubject classification. Building on this success, three additional systems were developed for four-way classification. The final model, ML-CSP-OVR, demonstrated the highest intersubject classification accuracy of 78.08% using all combined data and 76.39% for leave-one-out intersubject classification. This proposed model, featuring a novel combination of CSP-OVR, CWT, and GoogLeNet, represents a significant advancement in the field, showcasing strong potential as a general system for motor imagery (MI) tasks that is not dependent on the subject. This work highlights the prominence of the research contribution by demonstrating the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach in achieving high classification accuracy across different motor functions and subjects.

I see artifacts: ICA-based EEG artifact removal does not improve deep network decoding across three BCI tasks

Abstract \textit{Objective.}
In this paper, we conduct a detailed investigation on the effect of IC-based noise rejection methods in neural network classifier-based decoding of electroencephalography (EEG) data in different task datasets.
\textit{Approach.}
We apply a pipeline matrix of two popular different Independent Component (IC) decomposition methods (Infomax, AMICA) with three different component rejection strategies (none, ICLabel, and MARA) on three different EEG datasets (Motor imagery, long-term memory formation, and visual memory). We cross-validate processed data from each pipeline with three architectures commonly used for EEG classification (two convolutional neural networks (CNN) and one long short term memory (LSTM) based model. We compare decoding performances on within-participant and within-dataset levels. 
\textit{Main Results.}
Our results show that the benefit from using IC-based noise rejection for decoding analyses is at best minor, as component-rejected data did not show consistently better performance than data without rejections---especially given the significant computational resources required for ICA computations.
\textit{Significance.}
With ever growing emphasis on transparency and reproducibility, as well as the obvious benefits arising from streamlined processing of large-scale datasets, there has been an increased interest in automated methods for pre-processing EEG data. One prominent part of such pre-processing pipelines consists of identifying and potentially removing artifacts arising from extraneous sources. This is typically done via Independent Component (IC) based correction for which numerous methods have been proposed, differing not only in the decomposition of the raw data into ICs, but also in how they reject the computed ICs. While the benefits of these methods are well established in univariate statistical analyses, it is unclear whether they help in multivariate scenarios, and specifically in neural network based decoding studies. As computational costs for pre-processing large-scale datasets are considerable, it is important to consider whether the tradeoff between model performance and available resources is worth the effort.