Spiking neural networks for EEG signal analysis using wavelet transform

Abstract

Introduction: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) leverage EEG signal processing to enable human-machine communication and have broad application potential. However, existing deep learning-based BCI methods face two critical limitations that hinder their practical deployment: reliance on manual EEG feature extraction, which constrains their ability to adaptively capture complex neural patterns, and high energy consumption characteristics that make them unsuitable for resource-constrained portable BCI devices requiring edge deployment. Methods: To address these limitations, this work combines wavelet transform for automatic feature extraction with spiking neural networks for energy-efficient computation. Specifically, we present a novel spiking transformer that integrates a spiking self-attention mechanism with discrete wavelet transform, termed SpikeWavformer. SpikeWavformer enables automatic EEG signal time-frequency decomposition, eliminates manual feature extraction, and provides energy-efficient classification decision-making, thereby enhancing the model's cross-scene generalization while meeting the constraints of portable BCI applications. Results: Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of SpikeWavformer in emotion recognition and auditory attention decoding tasks. Discussion: These findings indicate that SpikeWavformer can address the key limitations of existing BCI methods and holds promise for practical deployment in portable, resource-constrained scenarios.