Utilizing sensor data to model students’ creativity in a digital environment

While creativity is essential for developing students’ broad expertise in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields, many students struggle with various aspects of being creative. Digital technologies have the unique opportunity to support the creative process by (1) recognizing elements of students’ creativity, such as when creativity is lacking (modeling step), and (2) providing tailored scaffolding based on that information (intervention step). However, to date little work exists on either of these aspects. Here, we focus on the modeling step. Specifically, we explore the utility of various sensing devices, including an eye tracker, a skin conductance bracelet, and an EEG sensor, for modeling creativity during an educational activity, namely geometry proof generation. We found reliable differences in sensor features characterizing low vs. high creativity students. We then applied machine learning to build classifiers that achieved good accuracy in distinguishing these two student groups, providing evidence that sensor features are valuable for modeling creativity.     

基于时频域的卷积神经网络运动想象脑电信号识别方法

针对目前运动想象脑电（EEG）信号识别率较低的问题，考虑到脑电信号蕴含着丰富的时频信息，提出一种基于时频域的卷积神经网络（CNN）运动想象脑电信号识别方法。首先，利用短时傅里叶变换（STFT）对脑电信号的相关频带进行预处理，并将多个电极的时频图组合构造出一种二维时频图；然后，针对二维时频图的时频特性，通过一维卷积的方法设计了一种新颖的CNN结构；最后，通过支持向量机（SVM）对CNN提取的特征进行分类。基于BCI数据集的实验结果表明，所提方法的平均识别率为86.5%，优于其他传统运动想象脑电信号识别方法；同时将该方法应用在智能轮椅上，验证了其有效性。     

Detrended Fluctuation Analysis of the Human EEG during Listening to Emotional Music

A nonlinear method named detrended fluctuation analysis （DFA） was utilized to investigate the scaling behavior of the human electroencephalogram （EEG） in three emotional music conditions （fear, happiness, sadness） and a rest condition （eyes-closed）. The results showed that the EEG exhibited scaling behavior in two regions with two scaling exponents β1 and β2 which represented the complexity of higher and lower frequency activity besides α band respectively. As the emotional intensity decreased the value of β1 increased and the value of β2 decreased. The change of β1 was weakly correlated with the ＇approach-withdrawal＇ model of emotion and both of fear and sad music made certain differences compared with the eyes-closed rest condition. The study shows that music is a powerful elicitor of emotion and that using nonlinear method can potentially contribute to the investigation of emotion.     

离散差分模块在癫痫脑电分类中的应用

针对癫痫脑电信号多分类的精度提升问题,提出了一种基于信号转差分模块与卷积模块结合的分类算法。信号转差分模块对原始脑电信号进行多阶差分运算,得到描述其波动特征的差分表示;然后卷积模块动态学习的方式将差分脑电信号转换为图片,利用预训练的卷积神经网络来提取信号特征并实现自动分类。分类结果表明,与现有研究相比,所提出的方法的最高提升了8.1%的分类准确率。在两分类问题上达到了99.8%的分类准确率,在三分类问题上获得了92.8%的准确率,在五分类问题上取得了86.7%的准确率。说明信号转差分模块对于脑电信号分类问题有积极作用。     

Epileptic seizure classification in EEG signals using second-order difference plot of intrinsic mode functions

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder which is characterized by transient and unexpected electrical disturbance of the brain. The electroencephalogram (EEG) is a commonly used signal for detection of epileptic seizures. This paper presents a new method for classification of ictal and seizure-free EEG signals. The proposed method is based on the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and the second-order difference plot (SODP). The EMD method decomposes an EEG signal into a set of symmetric and band-limited signals termed as intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). The SODP of IMFs provides elliptical structure. The 95% confidence ellipse area measured from the SODP of IMFs has been used as a feature in order to discriminate seizure-free EEG signals from the epileptic seizure EEG signals. The feature space obtained from the ellipse area parameters of two IMFs has been used for classification of ictal and seizure-free EEG signals using the artificial neural network (ANN) classifier. It has been shown that the feature space formed using ellipse area parameters of first and second IMFs has given good classification performance. Experimental results on EEG database available by the University of Bonn, Germany, are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

脑电Laplacian空域滤波的改进算法

Laplacian空域滤波通过被关注的通道与相邻通道信号转换,能有效地提高脑电信号的信噪比,经典的Laplacian空域滤波矩阵由通道之间的距离确定.该方法依赖于相应通道定位的准确性,实际应用中不能保证电极精准安放并存在个体差异,影响了该方法的应用效果.为了提高该算法的通用性,采用高斯模型改进经典Laplacian空域滤波算法,根据用户调试数据确定模型相关参数,进而确定空域滤波矩阵.采用国际脑机接口竞赛BCI competition 2005 Ⅳ数据集验证滤波后的效果,总体比经典Laplacian方法识别准确度提高10个百分比,采用改进方法滤波后不同类间距离增大、同类间距离减小,提高了信号的信噪比.     

MULTIVARIATE WALSH-FOURIER ANALYSIS

Abstract. In this paper we establish a statistical methodology for the spectral analysis of stationary multivariate time series via the Walsh-Fourier transform. Theoretical results pertaining to the definition and estimation of the Walsh-Fourier spectral matrix and functions of that matrix including cross-spectra, coherency and phase are given. An example of the statistical techniques developed in this paper is given; in particular, the methodologies are applied to neonatal sleep data collected from a study of the effect of maternal substance use during pregnancy.     

基于自适应阈值的脑电信号去噪方法

脑电采集后得到的脑电信号(Electroencephalogram,EEG)中含有噪声信号,为了有效去除噪声并保留有用信息,本文在软阈值去噪的基础上,提出一种改进阈值去除EEG噪声的算法。利用小波变换对EEG信号分解,得到多层的高频系数和低频系数;根据分解层次不同,对小波系数进行自适应的阈值处理;将缩放后的小波系数重构,得到去噪后的EEG信号。以信噪比、均方根误差作为去噪效果的定量指标,将改进算法与硬阈值法、软阈值法、Garrote阈值法进行比较,结果表明,改进阈值法优于其他3种阈值法。     

基于EEG微状态方法的视觉想象识别研究

运动想象MI是基于想象的脑机交互BCI中常用的任务,但MI不易习得和控制,且存在“BCI盲”现象,使得该类BCI的实用化受限。 针对较易习得和控制的视觉想象VI任务进行识别,旨在构建基于VI的BCI(VI-BCI)。招募了15名被试者参加2种动态图像的视觉想象任务并采集脑电EEG数据;然后采用EEG微状态方法研究了这2种VI任务诱发的EEG在微状态时间参数上的差异,并选用差异显著的微状态时间参数构建特征向量;最后采用SVM对2类VI任务进行识别。结果显示提取微状态特征所取得的最高、最低和平均分类精度分别为90%,56%和80.6±2.58%。表明微状态方法可以有效提取VI相关EEG特征并得到具有可比性的分类精度,可望为构建相对较新的在线VI-BCI提供思路。     

A multimodal-Siamese Neural Network (mSNN) for person verification using signatures and EEG

Signatures have long been considered to be one of the most accepted and practical means of user verification, despite being vulnerable to skilled forgers. In contrast, EEG signals have more recently been shown to be more difficult to replicate, and to provide better biometric information in response to known a stimulus. In this paper, we propose combining these two biometric traits using a multimodal Siamese Neural Network (mSNN) for improved user verification. The proposed mSNN network learns discriminative temporal and spatial features from the EEG signals using an EEG encoder and from the offline signatures using an image encoder. Features of the two encoders are fused into a common feature space for further processing. A Siamese network then employs a distance metric based on the similarity and dissimilarity of the input features to produce the verification results. The proposed model is evaluated on a dataset of 70 users, comprised of 1400 unique samples. The novel mSNN model achieves a 98.57% classification accuracy with a 99.29% True Positive Rate (TPR) and False Acceptance Rate (FAR) of 2.14%, outperforming the current state-of-the-art by 12.86% (in absolute terms). This proposed network architecture may also be applicable to the fusion of other neurological data sources to build robust biometric verification or diagnostic systems with limited data size.