Anomalous pattern based clustering of mental tasks with subject independent learning – some preliminary results

In this paper we describe a new method for EEG signal classification in which the classification of one subject’s EEG signals is based on features learnt from another subject. This method applies to the power spectrum density data and assigns class-dependent information weights to individual features. The informative features appear to be rather similar among different subjects, thus supporting the view that there are subject independent general brain patterns for the same mental task. Classification is done via clustering using the intelligent k-means algorithm with the most informative features from a different subject. We experimentally compare our method with others.</jats:p

Wavelet Lifting over Information-Based EEG Graphs for Motor Imagery Data Classification

The imagination of limb movements offers an intuitive paradigm for the control of electronic devices via brain computer interfacing (BCI). The analysis of electroencephalographic (EEG) data related to motor imagery potentials has proved to be a difficult task. EEG readings are noisy, and the elicited patterns occur in different parts of the scalp, at different instants and at different frequencies. Wavelet transform has been widely used in the BCI field as it offers temporal and spectral capabilities, although it lacks spatial information. In this study we propose a tailored second generation wavelet to extract features from these three domains. This transform is applied over a graph representation of motor imaginary trials, which encodes temporal and spatial information. This graph is enhanced using per-subject knowledge in order to optimise the spatial relationships among the electrodes, and to improve the filter design. This method improves the performance of classifying different imaginary limb movements maintaining the low computational resources required by the lifting transform over graphs. By using an online dataset we were able to positively assess the feasibility of using the novel method in an online BCI context

Quantification of SSVEP responses using multi-chromatic LED stimuli: Analysis on colour, orientation and frequency

Most LED visual stimulators used in steady state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) brain-computer interface (BCI) use single LED sources to elicit SSVEP responses. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that different orientations would have different responses in different participants and aimed to develop a portable LED based stimulus design which consists of a small number of RGB LEDs arranged in a line which can be oriented horizontally or vertically. The colour and frequency of the flicker were controlled by a portable microcontroller platform. The study investigated the performance of the SSVEP from five participants when the LED stimulus was displayed vertically and horizontally for a period of 30 seconds. The frequency range used was from 7 Hz to 11 Hz with three primary colours: red, green and blue in both orientations. Furthermore, we also compared the effect of vertical and horizontal orientations using four different frequencies and three colours to test visual fatigue reduction. The results of the analysis using band-pass filtering and Fast Fourier Transform showed that the green horizontal LED stimulus orientation gave the highest response and viewing comfort in all the participants rather than the vertical orientation

EEG source-space synchrostate transitions and Markov modeling in the math-gifted brain during a long-chain reasoning task

To reveal transition dynamics of global neuronal networks of math‐gifted adolescents in handling long‐chain reasoning, this study explores momentary phase‐synchronized patterns, that is, electroencephalogram (EEG) synchrostates, of intracerebral sources sustained in successive 50 ms time windows during a reasoning task and non‐task idle process. Through agglomerative hierarchical clustering for functional connectivity graphs and nested iterative cosine similarity tests, this study identifies seven general and one reasoning‐specific prototypical functional connectivity patterns from all synchrostates. Markov modeling is performed for the time‐sequential synchrostates of each trial to characterize the interstate transitions. The analysis reveals that default mode network, central executive network (CEN), dorsal attention network, cingulo‐opercular network, left/right ventral frontoparietal network, and ventral visual network aperiodically recur over non‐task or reasoning process, exhibiting high predictability in interactively reachable transitions. Compared to non‐gifted subjects, math‐gifted adolescents show higher fractional occupancy and mean duration in CEN and reasoning‐triggered transient right frontotemporal network (rFTN) in the time course of the reasoning process. Statistical modeling of Markov chains reveals that there are more self‐loops in CEN and rFTN of the math‐gifted brain, suggesting robust state durability in temporally maintaining the topological structures. Besides, math‐gifted subjects show higher probabilities in switching from the other types of synchrostates to CEN and rFTN, which represents more adaptive reconfiguration of connectivity pattern in the large‐scale cortical network for focused task‐related information processing, which underlies superior executive functions in controlling goal‐directed persistence and high predictability of implementing imagination and creative thinking during long‐chain reasoning

Small facial image dataset augmentation using conditional GANs based on incomplete edge feature input

Image data collection and labelling is costly or difficult in many real applications. Generating diverse and controllable images using conditional generative adversarial networks (GANs) for data augmentation from a small dataset is promising but challenging as deep convolutional neural networks need a large training dataset to achieve reasonable performance in general. However, unlabeled and incomplete features (e.g., unintegral edges, simplified lines, hand-drawn sketches, discontinuous geometry shapes, etc.) can be conveniently obtained through pre-processing the training images and can be used for image data augmentation. This paper proposes a conditional GAN framework for facial image augmentation using a very small training dataset and incomplete or modified edge features as conditional input for diversity. The proposed method defines a new domain or space for refining interim images to prevent overfitting caused by using a very small training dataset and enhance the tolerance of distortions caused by incomplete edge features, which effectively improves the quality of facial image augmentation with diversity. Experimental results have shown that the proposed method can generate high-quality images of good diversity when the GANs are trained using very sparse edges and a small number of training samples. Compared to the state-of-the-art edge-to-image translation methods that directly convert sparse edges to images, when using a small training dataset, the proposed conditional GAN framework can generate facial images with desirable diversity and acceptable distortions for dataset augmentation and significantly outperform the existing methods in terms of the quality of synthesised images, evaluated by Fréchet Inception Distance (FID) and Kernel Inception Distance (KID) scores

A Novel Design of 4-Class BCI Using Two Binary Classifiers and Parallel Mental Tasks

A novel 4-class single-trial brain computer interface (BCI) based on two (rather than four or more) binary linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classifiers is proposed, which is called a “parallel BCI.” Unlike other BCIs where mental tasks are executed and classified in a serial way one after another, the parallel BCI uses properly designed parallel mental tasks that are executed on both sides of the subject body simultaneously, which is the main novelty of the BCI paradigm used in our experiments. Each of the two binary classifiers only classifies the mental tasks executed on one side of the subject body, and the results of the two binary classifiers are combined to give the result of the 4-class BCI. Data was recorded in experiments with both real movement and motor imagery in 3 able-bodied subjects. Artifacts were not detected or removed. Offline analysis has shown that, in some subjects, the parallel BCI can generate a higher accuracy than a conventional 4-class BCI, although both of them have used the same feature selection and classification algorithms

A three-stage learning algorithm for deep multilayer perceptron with effective weight initialisation based on sparse auto-encoder

A three-stage learning algorithm for deep multilayer perceptron (DMLP) with effective weight initialisation based on sparse auto-encoder is proposed in this paper, which aims to overcome difficulties in training deep neural networks with limited training data in high-dimensional feature space. At the first stage, unsupervised learning is adopted using sparse auto-encoder to obtain the initial weights of the feature extraction layers of the DMLP. At the second stage, error back-propagation is used to train the DMLP by fixing the weights obtained at the first stage for its feature extraction layers. At the third stage, all the weights of the DMLP obtained at the second stage are refined by error back-propagation. Network structures and values of learning parameters are determined through cross-validation, and test datasets unseen in the cross-validation are used to evaluate the performance of the DMLP trained using the three-stage learning algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective in combating overfitting in training deep neural networks

Collective sparse symmetric non-negative matrix factorization for identifying overlapping communities in resting-state brain functional networks

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) provides a valuable tool to study spontaneous brain activity. Using rs-fMRI, researchers have extensively studied the organization of the brain functional network and found several consistent communities consisting of functionally connected but spatially separated brain regions across subjects. However, increasing evidence in many disciplines has shown that most realistic complex networks have overlapping community structure. Only recently has the overlapping community structure drawn increasing interest in the domain of brain network studies. Another issue is that the inter-subject variability is often not directly reflected in the process of community detection at the group level. In this paper, we propose a novel method called collective sparse symmetric non-negative matrix factorization (cssNMF) to address these issues. The cssNMF approach identifies the group-level overlapping communities across subjects and in the meantime preserves the information of individual variation in brain functional network organization. To comprehensively validate cssNMF, a simulated fMRI dataset with ground-truth, a real rs-fMRI dataset with two repeated sessions and another different real rs-fMRI dataset have been used for performance comparison in the experiment. Experimental results show that the proposed cssNMF method accurately and stably identifies group-level overlapping communities across subjects as well as individual differences in network organization with neurophysiologically meaningful interpretations. This research extends our understanding of the common underlying community structures and individual differences in community strengths in brain functional network organization

Adaptive feature extraction in EEG-based motor imagery BCI: tracking mental fatigue

Objective: Electroencephelogram (EEG) signals are non-stationary. This could be due to the internal fluctuation of brain states such as fatigue, frustration, etc. This necessitates the development of adaptive Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) whose performance does not deteriorate significantly with the adversary change in the cognitive state. In this paper, we put forward an unsupervised adaptive scheme to adapt the feature extractor of motor imagery (MI) BCIs by tracking the fatigue level of the user. Approach: Eleven subjects participated in the study during which they accomplished MI tasks while self-reporting their perceived levels of mental fatigue. Out of the 11 subjects, only 6 completed the whole experiment, while the others quit in the middle because of experiencing high fatigue. The adaptive feature extractor is attained through the adaptation of the common spatial patterns (CSP), one of the most popular feature extraction algorithms in EEG-based BCIs. The proposed method was analyzed in two ways: oine and in near real-time. The separability of the MI EEG features extracted by the proposed adaptive CSP (ADCSP) has been compared with that by the conventional CSP (C-CSP) and another CSP based adaptive method (ACSP) in terms of: Davies Bouldin Index (DBI), Fisher Score (FS) and Dunn's Index (DI). Results: Experimental results show significant improvement in the separability of MI EEG features extracted by ADCSP as compared to that by C-CSP and ACSP. Signficance: Collectively, the results of the experiments in this study suggest that adapting CSP based on mental fatigue can improve the class separability of MI EEG features

A Kernel Partial Least Square Based Feature Selection Method

Maximum relevance and minimum redundancy (mRMR) has been well recognised as one of the best feature selection methods. This paper proposes a Kernel Partial Least Square (KPLS) based mRMR method, aiming for easy computation and improving classification accuracy for high-dimensional data. Experiments with this approach have been conducted on seven real-life datasets of varied dimensionality and number of instances, with performance measured on four different classifiers: Naive Bayes, Linear Discriminant Analysis, Random Forest and Support Vector Machine. Experimental results have exhibited the advantage of the proposed method over several competing feature selection techniques