Deep learning for cross-subject EEG decoding is hindered by high inter-subject variability, which introduces a severe domain shift between training and unseen test subjects. This survey presents a comprehensive review of deep learning methodologies specifically engineered to address this cross-subject generalization challenge. To ground this analysis, we formalize the cross-subject setting as a multi-source domain problem and delineate the rigorous, subject-independent evaluation protocols required for valid assessment. Central to this survey is a systematic taxonomy of the current literature into discrete methodological families, including feature alignment, adversarial learning, feature disentanglement, and contrastive learning. We conclude by examining three critical elements for advancing robust, real-world decoding: the theoretical limitations of current methodologies, the structural value of subject identity, and the emergence of EEG foundation models.
The development of generalizable electroencephalography (EEG) decoding models is essential for robust brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and objective neural biomarkers in mental health. Conventional approaches have been hindered by poor cross-subject and cross-task generalization, owing to high inter-subject variability and non-stationary neural signals. We address this challenge with a zero-shot cross-subject decoding framework on the large-scale Healthy Brain Network dataset, benchmarking a convolutional neural network baseline, a hybrid LSTM, and a Transformer-based foundation model. To adapt the Transformer for regression while averting catastrophic forgetting, we propose a novel progressive unfreezing strategy. The baseline yielded an nRMSE of 0.9991, whereas our fine-tuned Transformer achieved 0.9799 on unseen subjects. This work advances scalable, calibration-free EEG decoding for computational psychiatry and behavioral prediction.
Baimam Boukar Jean Jacques, Brandone Fonya, Nchofon Tagha Ghogomu +2
Cross-subject EEG decoding promises more training data, but it also exposes neural networks to strong inter-subject distribution shifts. We study whether task supervision and architecture alone can learn subject-aligned representations. We replace a shared EEG encoder with subject-specific encoders followed by a common classifier, and compare this hybrid model with standard EEGNet, AttentionBaseNet, and CTNet baselines with Euclidean Alignment (EA) on three motor-imagery datasets and one motor-execution dataset. EA improves shared encoders by recentering subject covariances, whereas the hybrid encoder reduces reliance on EA: removing EA has little effect on validation-loss dynamics or latent-space organization, and both hybrid variants consistently outperform non-aligned shared baselines. Subject-specific heads increase class distinctiveness and place each subject close to its own latent manifold while improving within-subject class separation. However, on cross-subject classification, subject-specific heads hinder direct parameter transfer to unseen subjects, motivating quantitative head selection and a brief calibration session. Although decoding gains depend on the dataset and backbone, our main findings concern that the sole use of architecture pressure promotes representation learning and alignment in a direction complementary to domain adaptation methods such as Euclidean Alignment. A per-subject low-rank adapter of only 2Cr parameters recover the full encoder's accuracy across five backbones and ranks r=1 to 16, so the per-subject module can be compressed by two to three orders of magnitude.
Bruna J. Lopes, Gabriel Schwartz, Sylvain Chevallier +2
Electroencephalogram (EEG) captures endogenous brain activity with high temporal fidelity and holds substantial promise for precise emotion decoding. However, channel redundancy and pronounced inter-subject variability remain key obstacles to scalable generalization. To address these limitations, we propose a novel framework termed PRioritized channel Importance with Semi-supervised doMain adaptation (PRISM), enabling label-efficient cross-subject emotion decoding. On the channel side, PRISM assigns differentiable, data-dependent channel weights via a lightweight expert ensemble, amplifying reliable electrodes while suppressing distractors. On the domain side, PRISM leverages unlabeled data through confidence-filtered pseudo-labels to drive consistency regularization and domain alignment, mitigating subject-specific heterogeneity. Extensive experiments show that PRISM surpasses state-of-the-art methods on DEAP, DREAMER, and SEED datasets, achieving robust cross-subject generalization given limited annotations.