Low-Dimensional Subject Representation-Based Transfer Learning in EEG Decoding

NeuroGrasp: Real-Time EEG Classification of High-Level Motor Imagery Tasks Using a Dual-Stage Deep Learning Framework

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been widely employed to identify and estimate a user's intention to trigger a robotic device by decoding motor imagery (MI) from an electroencephalogram (EEG). However, developing a BCI system driven by MI related to natural hand-grasp tasks is challenging due to its high complexity. Although numerous BCI studies have successfully decoded large body parts, such as the movement intention of both hands, arms, or legs, research on MI decoding of high-level behaviors such as hand grasping is essential to further expand the versatility of MI-based BCIs. In this study, we propose NeuroGrasp, a dual-stage deep learning framework that decodes multiple hand grasping from EEG signals under the MI paradigm. The proposed method effectively uses an EEG and electromyography (EMG)-based learning, such that EEG-based inference at test phase becomes possible. The EMG guidance during model training allows BCIs to predict hand grasp types from EEG signals accurately. Consequently, NeuroGrasp improved classification performance offline, and demonstrated a stable classification performance online. Across 12 subjects, we obtained an average offline classification accuracy of 0.68 (±0.09) in four-grasp-type classifications and 0.86 (±0.04) in two-grasp category classifications. In addition, we obtained an average online classification accuracy of 0.65 (±0.09) and 0.79 (±0.09) across six high-performance subjects. Because the proposed method has demonstrated a stable classification performance when evaluated either online or offline, in the future, we expect that the proposed method could contribute to different BCI applications, including robotic hands or neuroprosthetics for handling everyday objects.

Multi-Source Decentralized Transfer for Privacy-Preserving BCIs

Transfer learning, which utilizes labeled source domains to facilitate the learning in a target model, is effective in alleviating high intra- and inter-subject variations in electroencephalogram (EEG) based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Existing transfer learning approaches usually use the source subjects' EEG data directly, leading to privacy concerns. This paper considers a decentralized privacy-preserving transfer learning scenario: there are multiple source subjects, whose data and computations are kept local, and only the parameters or predictions of their pre-trained models can be accessed for privacy-protection; then, how to perform effective cross-subject transfer for a new subject with unlabeled EEG trials? We propose an offline unsupervised multi-source decentralized transfer (MSDT) approach, which first generates a pre-trained model from each source subject, and then performs decentralized transfer using the source model parameters (in gray-box settings) or predictions (in black-box settings). Experiments on two datasets from two BCI paradigms, motor imagery and affective BCI, demonstrated that MSDT outperformed several existing approaches, which do not consider privacy-protection at all. In other words, MSDT achieved both high privacy-protection and better classification performance.

Multi-Armed Bandits in Brain-Computer Interfaces

The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem models a decision-maker that optimizes its actions based on current and acquired new knowledge to maximize its reward. This type of online decision is prominent in many procedures of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) and MAB has previously been used to investigate, e.g., what mental commands to use to optimize BCI performance. However, MAB optimization in the context of BCI is still relatively unexplored, even though it has the potential to improve BCI performance during both calibration and real-time implementation. Therefore, this review aims to further describe the fruitful area of MABs to the BCI community. The review includes a background on MAB problems and standard solution methods, and interpretations related to BCI systems. Moreover, it includes state-of-the-art concepts of MAB in BCI and suggestions for future research.

Classification of motor imagery using multisource joint transfer learning

As an important way for human-computer interaction, the motor imagery brain-computer interface (MI-BCI) can decode personal motor intention directly by analyzing electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. However, a large amount of labeled data has to be collected for each new subject since EEG patterns vary between individuals. The long calibration phase severely limits the further development of MI-BCI. To tackle this problem, multi-source joint domain adaption (MJDA) and multi-source joint Riemannian adaption (MJRA) algorithms are proposed in this paper. Both methods aim to transfer knowledge from other subjects to the current subject who has only a small amount of labeled data. First, the common spatial pattern with Euclidean alignment is used to select source subjects who have similar spatial patterns to the target subject. Second, the covariance matrices of EEG trials are aligned in Riemannian space by removing subject-specific baselines. These two steps are shared by MJDA and MJRA. In the last step, MJDA attempts to minimize the feature distribution mismatch in the Riemannian tangent space, while MJRA attempts to find an adaptive Riemannian classifier. Finally, the proposed methods are validated on two datasets: BCI Competition IV 2a and online event-related desynchronization (ERD)-BCI. The experimental results demonstrate that both MJDA and MJRA outperform the state-of-the-art approaches. The MJDA provides a new idea for the offline analysis of MI-BCI, while MJRA could make a big difference to the online calibration of MI-BCI.