EEG-based emotion recognition using a temporal-difference minimizing neural network

Abstract

Electroencephalogram (EEG) emotion recognition plays an important role in human–computer interaction. An increasing number of algorithms for emotion recognition have been proposed recently. However, it is still challenging to make efficient use of emotional activity knowledge. In this paper, based on prior knowledge that emotion varies slowly across time, we propose a temporal-difference minimizing neural network (TDMNN) for EEG emotion recognition. We use maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) technology to evaluate the difference in EEG features across time and minimize the difference by a multibranch convolutional recurrent network. State-of-the-art performances are achieved using the proposed method on the SEED, SEED-IV, DEAP and DREAMER datasets, demonstrating the effectiveness of including prior knowledge in EEG emotion recognition.