MASA-TCN: Multi-Anchor Space-Aware Temporal Convolutional Neural Networks for Continuous and Discrete EEG Emotion Recognition.

ABSTRACT

Emotion recognition from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals is a critical domain in biomedical research with applications ranging from mental disorder regulation to human-computer interaction. In this paper, we address two fundamental aspects of EEG emotion recognition continuous regression of emotional states and discrete classification of emotions. While classification methods have garnered significant attention, regression methods remain relatively under-explored. To bridge this gap, we introduce MASA-TCN, a novel unified model that leverages the spatial learning capabilities of Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCNs) for EEG emotion regression and classification tasks. The key innovation lies in the introduction of a space-aware temporal layer, which empowers TCN to capture spatial relationships among EEG electrodes, enhancing its ability to discern nuanced emotional states. Additionally, we design a multi-anchor block with attentive fusion, enabling the model to adaptively learn dynamic temporal dependencies within the EEG signals. Experiments on two publicly available datasets show that MASA-TCN achieves higher results than the state-of-the-art methods for both EEG emotion regression and classification tasks.