Ultra Efficient Transfer Learning with Meta Update for Cross Subject EEG Classification

Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is widely used in brain computer interfaces (BCI), the pattern of which differs significantly across different subjects, and poses a major challenge for real world application of EEG classifiers. We found an efficient transfer learning method, named Meta UPdate Strategy (MUPS), boosts cross subject classification performance of EEG signals, and only need a small amount of data from target subject. The model tackles the problem with a two step process: (1) extract versatile features that are effective across all source subjects, and (2) adapt the model to target subject. The proposed model, which originates from meta learning, aims to find feature representation that is broadly suitable for different subjects, and maximizes sensitivity of the loss function on new subject such that one or a small number of gradient steps can lead to effective adaptation. The method can be applied to all deep learning oriented models. We performed extensive experiments on two public datasets, the proposed MUPS model outperforms current state of the arts by a large margin on accuracy and AUC-ROC when only a small amount of target data is used.