Motor imagery (MI)-based electroencephalography is widely used in non-invasive brain--computer interfaces (BCIs), but robust decoding remains challenging due to inter-subject variability and cross-session non-stationarity. This work proposes ATCNet-CIAM, an enhanced attention temporal convolutional network that integrates a lightweight channel-integrated attention module (CIAM) into the ATCNet framework to improve channel-spatial feature representation for MI decoding. The proposed model is evaluated on BCI Competition IV-2a, BCI Competition IV-2b, and the multi-day WBCIC-MI dataset under standard, within-session, and cross-session protocols. Experimental results show that ATCNet-CIAM achieves 86.32% accuracy on BCI IV-2a and 87.96% on BCI IV-2b under the standard protocol, while reaching 89.46% and 83.64% in the within-session WBCIC-MI on 2C and 3C, respectively. The proposed framework consistently improves classification stability and robustness under session-varying conditions, and ablation study confirms the complementary contribution of the proposed architectural components.
Motor imagery (MI) brain--computer interfaces (BCIs) have emerged as a promising approach for establishing flexible communication pathways between the human brain and external devices , particularly for individuals affected by stroke or neurodegenerative disorders. Reliable decoding of motor-imagery electroencephalography (MI-EEG) remains challenging because EEG recordings contain substantial noise and exhibit complex, weakly informative relationships with the underlying brain activity. Although deep learning provides an effective means of learning representations directly from EEG signals, its application to MI-EEG feature learning remains comparatively limited. This study introduces a hybrid deep-learning architecture that integrates a convolutional neural network (CNN) with a bidirectional long short-term memory (bi-LSTM) network. The CNN is used to learn high-level spatial and temporal representations directly from raw MI-EEG recordings, whereas the bi-LSTM models temporal dependencies and relationships among the extracted features. The proposed approach is evaluated using both a publicly available dataset and a privately acquired dataset obtained with an EEG acquisition system. The experimental results indicate that the CNN&bi-LSTM architecture provides robust performance for both two- and three-class motor-imagery classification and demonstrates promising subject-independent decoding capability across the evaluated methods.
Electroencephalography (EEG) is the dominant non-invasive modality for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), yet reliable decoding of motor imagery is hampered by inter- and intra-individual variability. A recurring claim is that one decoding pipeline, most often a spatial or Riemannian method, is broadly preferable. We test the weakest version of that claim under the most favourable conditions. Using the Mother of All BCI Benchmarks (MOABB) framework, we evaluated 1,056 decoding configurations (feature extractor x scaler x classifier), >340,000 subject-level model fits, across three public left-versus-right motor-imagery datasets (PhysionetMI, 109 participants; Cho2017, 52; Zhou2016, 4) and two frequency bands (8-15 Hz, 8-30 Hz). Every model is fit and tested within a single session of a single participant, the easiest regime, giving every pipeline its best chance. We apply the statistics standard for multi-classifier comparison: Friedman omnibus tests, Nemenyi critical-difference analysis and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests with effect sizes. Covariance tangent-space projection (cov-tgsp) and Common Spatial Patterns (CSP) are the strongest families, but their ordering is dataset-dependent and, on the largest and most heterogeneous cohort (PhysionetMI), statistically indistinguishable (Nemenyi p = 0.27; Kendall's W = 0.11). At the individual level the single best pipeline is optimal for only 35% of PhysionetMI participants, and nonlinear descriptors are best for roughly one third; matching pipeline to participant adds about seven accuracy points over the best fixed choice. The ranking is not an artefact of dimensionality, and classifier and scaler choices are secondary to the feature representation. Even in the easiest regime, no single pipeline dominates: a lower bound on the personalization problem and a quantitative case for participant-aware model selection rather than a universal decoder.
Stroke patient cross-subject electroencephalography (EEG) decoding of motor imagery (MI) brain-computer interface (BCI) is essential for motor rehabilitation, yet lesion-related abnormal temporal dynamics and pronounced inter-patient heterogeneity often undermine generalization. Existing adaptation methods are easily misled by pathological slow-wave activity and unstable target-domain pseudo-labels. To address this challenge, we propose PA-TCNet, a pathology-aware temporal calibration framework with physiology-guided target refinement for stroke motor imagery decoding. PA-TCNet integrates two coordinated components. The Pathology-aware Rhythmic State Mamba (PRSM) module decomposes EEG spatiotemporal features into slowly varying rhythmic context and fast transient perturbations, injecting the fused pathological context into selective state propagation to more effectively capture abnormal temporal dynamics. The Physiology-Guided Target Calibration (PGTC) module constructs source-domain sensorimotor region-of-interest templates, imposing physiological consistency constraints and dynamically refining target-domain pseudo-labels, thereby improving adaptation reliability. Leave-one-subject-out experiments on two independent stroke EEG datasets, XW-Stroke and 2019-Stroke, yielded mean accuracies of 66.56% and 72.75%, respectively, outperforming state-of-the-art baselines. These results indicate that jointly modeling pathological temporal dynamics and physiology-constrained pseudo-supervision can provide more robust cross-subject initialization for personalized post-stroke MI-BCI rehabilitation. The implemented code is available at https://github.com/wxk1224/PA-TCNet.