Objective. Motor Imagery Brain-Computer Interface (MI-BCI) is an active Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) paradigm focusing on the identification of motor intention, which is one of the most important non-invasive BCI paradigms. In MI-BCI studies, deep learning-based methods (especially lightweight networks) have attracted more attention in recent years, but the decoding performance still needs further improving. Approach. To solve this problem, we designed a filter bank structure with sinc-convolutional layers for spatio-temporal feature extraction of MI-electroencephalography in four motor rhythms. The Channel Self-Attention method was introduced for feature selection based on both global and local information, so as to build a model called Filter Bank Sinc-convolutional Network with Channel Self-Attention for high performance MI-decoding. Also, we proposed a data augmentation method based on multivariate empirical mode decomposition to improve the generalization capability of the model. Main results. We performed an intra-subject evaluation experiment on unseen data of three open MI datasets. The proposed method achieved mean accuracy of 78.20% (4-class scenario) on BCI Competition IV IIa, 87.34% (2-class scenario) on BCI Competition IV IIb, and 72.03% (2-class scenario) on Open Brain Machine Interface (OpenBMI) dataset, which are significantly higher than those of compared deep learning-based methods by at least 3.05% ( p = 0.0469), 3.18% ( p = 0.0371), and 2.27% ( p = 0.0024) respectively. Significance. This work provides a new option for deep learning-based MI decoding, which can be employed for building BCI systems for motor rehabilitation.

Control parameters of classical control system are expected to be online tuned and optimized by intelligent methods, in order to improve performance and help engineers reduce a lot of repetitive work in dangerous and harmful working environments. Main ideas and works of this paper are as follows: Firstly, change ratio based expert PID control method (EA-PID) is proposed to expand range of control parameters. Expert rule table (ERT) of expert PID control method (E-PID) is replaced by change ratio table (CRT) of EA-PID. Adjusted parameters of EA-PID are the results of multiplying change ratios in current adjusting cycle and control parameters in previous adjusting cycle. Secondly, NARX prediction-based NARX-E-PID and NARX-EA-PID are proposed. The NARX neural network is designed as a time series predictor to predict the output of the control system, then control parameters are adjusted according to the predicted output. Thirdly, comparative simulations of all the above methods are implemented to verify the improved effects. Finally, theoretical analysis is provided to ensure the stability of control systems. Effect are as follows: Firstly, comparative simulations verify that the improved methods have faster control speed, smaller steady-state error, less overshoot, and better ability of anti-interference. Secondly, theoretical analysis shows that the unstable control systems with adjusted parameters can be changed into a stable system by stability judgment in each adjusting cycle.

Objective. Motor imagery-based brain–computer interface (MI-BCI) is one of the most important BCI paradigms and can identify the target limb of subjects from the feature of MI-based Electroencephalography signals. Deep learning methods, especially lightweight neural networks, provide an efficient technique for MI decoding, but the performance of lightweight neural networks is still limited and need further improving. This paper aimed to design a novel lightweight neural network for improving the performance of multi-class MI decoding. Approach. A hybrid filter bank structure that can extract information in both time and frequency domain was proposed and combined with a novel channel attention method channel group attention (CGA) to build a lightweight neural network Filter Bank CGA Network (FB-CGANet). Accompanied with FB-CGANet, the band exchange data augmentation method was proposed to generate training data for networks with filter bank structure. Main results. The proposed method can achieve higher 4-class average accuracy (79.4%) than compared methods on the BCI Competition IV IIa dataset in the experiment on the unseen evaluation data. Also, higher average accuracy (93.5%) than compared methods can be obtained in the cross-validation experiment. Significance. This work implies the effectiveness of channel attention and filter bank structure in lightweight neural networks and provides a novel option for multi-class motor imagery classification.

Exploring the effective signal features of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals is an important issue in the research of brain–computer interface (BCI), and the results can reveal the motor intentions that trigger electrical changes in the brain, which has broad research prospects for feature extraction from EEG data. In contrast to previous EEG decoding methods that are based solely on a convolutional neural network, the traditional convolutional classification algorithm is optimized by combining a transformer mechanism with a constructed end-to-end EEG signal decoding algorithm based on swarm intelligence theory and virtual adversarial training. The use of a self-attention mechanism is studied to expand the receptive field of EEG signals to global dependence and train the neural network by optimizing the global parameters in the model. The proposed model is evaluated on a real-world public dataset and achieves the highest average accuracy of 63.56% in cross-subject experiments, which is significantly higher than that found for recently published algorithms. Additionally, good performance is achieved in decoding motor intentions. The experimental results show that the proposed classification framework promotes the global connection and optimization of EEG signals, which can be further applied to other BCI tasks.

As one of the important brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigms, motor imagery (MI) enables the control of external devices via identification of motor intention by decoding the features of Electroencephalography (EEG). Movement imagination of multi-types of joints from the same limb allows the development of more accurate and intuitive BCI systems. In this work, we reported an open dataset including EEG and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recordings from 18 subjects performing eight MI tasks from four types of joints including hand open/close, wrist flexion/extension, wrist abduction/adduction, elbow pronation/supination, elbow flexion/extension, shoulder pronation/supination, shoulder abduction/adduction, and shoulder flexion/extension, resulting in a total of 5760 trials. The validity of multi-modal data was verified both from the EEG/fNIRS activation patterns and the classification performance. It is expected that this dataset will facilitate the development and innovation of decoding algorithms for MI of multi-types of joints based on multi-modal EEG-fNIRS data.