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 neural signal




Visual Decoding and Reconstruction via EEG Embeddings with Guided Diffusion

Neural Information Processing Systems

How to decode human vision through neural signals has attracted a long-standing interest in neuroscience and machine learning. Modern contrastive learning and generative models improved the performance of visual decoding and reconstruction based on functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). However, the high cost and low temporal resolution of fMRI limit their applications in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), prompting a high need for visual decoding based on electroencephalography (EEG). In this study, we present an end-to-end EEG-based visual reconstruction zero-shot framework, consisting of a tailored brain encoder, called the Adaptive Thinking Mapper (ATM), which projects neural signals from different sources into the shared subspace as the clip embedding, and a two-stage multi-pipe EEG-to-image generation strategy. In stage one, EEG is embedded to align the high-level clip embedding, and then the prior diffusion model refines EEG embedding into image priors.


Brant: Foundation Model for Intracranial Neural Signal

Neural Information Processing Systems

We propose a foundation model named Brant for modeling intracranial recordings, which learns powerful representations of intracranial neural signals by pre-training, providing a large-scale, off-the-shelf model for medicine. Brant is the largest model in the field of brain signals and is pre-trained on a large corpus of intracranial data collected by us. The design of Brant is to capture long-term temporal dependency and spatial correlation from neural signals, combining the information in both time and frequency domains. As a foundation model, Brant achieves SOTA performance on various downstream tasks (i.e.


Tracking Functional Changes in Nonstationary Signals with Evolutionary Ensemble Bayesian Model for Robust Neural Decoding

Neural Information Processing Systems

Neural signals are typical nonstationary data where the functional mapping between neural activities and the intentions (such as the velocity of movements) can occasionally change. Existing studies mostly use a fixed neural decoder, thus suffering from an unstable performance given neural functional changes. We propose a novel evolutionary ensemble framework (EvoEnsemble) to dynamically cope with changes in neural signals by evolving the decoder model accordingly. EvoEnsemble integrates evolutionary computation algorithms in a Bayesian framework where the fitness of models can be sequentially computed with their likelihoods according to the incoming data at each time slot, which enables online tracking of time-varying functions. Two strategies of evolve-at-changes and history-model-archive are designed to further improve efficiency and stability. Experiments with simulations and neural signals demonstrate that EvoEnsemble can track the changes in functions effectively thus improving the accuracy and robustness of neural decoding. The improvement is most significant in neural signals with functional changes.


ManifoldFormer: Geometric Deep Learning for Neural Dynamics on Riemannian Manifolds

Fu, Yihang, He, Lifang, Chen, Qingyu

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Existing EEG foundation models mainly treat neural signals as generic time series in Euclidean space, ignoring the intrinsic geometric structure of neural dynamics that constrains brain activity to low-dimensional manifolds. This fundamental mismatch between model assumptions and neural geometry limits representation quality and cross-subject generalization. ManifoldFormer addresses this limitation through a novel geometric deep learning framework that explicitly learns neural manifold representations. The architecture integrates three key innovations: a Riemannian VAE for manifold embedding that preserves geometric structure, a geometric Transformer with geodesic-aware attention mechanisms operating directly on neural manifolds, and a dynamics predictor leveraging neural ODEs for manifold-constrained temporal evolution. Extensive evaluation across four public datasets demonstrates substantial improvements over state-of-the-art methods, with 4.6-4.8% higher accuracy and 6.2-10.2% higher Cohen's Kappa, while maintaining robust cross-subject generalization. The geometric approach reveals meaningful neural patterns consistent with neurophysiological principles, establishing geometric constraints as essential for effective EEG foundation models.


Neural Networks for Efficient Bayesian Decoding of Natural Images from Retinal Neurons

Neural Information Processing Systems

Decoding sensory stimuli from neural signals can be used to reveal how we sense our physical environment, and is valuable for the design of brain-machine interfaces. However, existing linear techniques for neural decoding may not fully reveal or exploit the fidelity of the neural signal. Here we develop a new approximate Bayesian method for decoding natural images from the spiking activity of populations of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). We sidestep known computational challenges with Bayesian inference by exploiting artificial neural networks developed for computer vision, enabling fast nonlinear decoding that incorporates natural scene statistics implicitly. We use a decoder architecture that first linearly reconstructs an image from RGC spikes, then applies a convolutional autoencoder to enhance the image. The resulting decoder, trained on natural images and simulated neural responses, significantly outperforms linear decoding, as well as simple point-wise nonlinear decoding. These results provide a tool for the assessment and optimization of retinal prosthesis technologies, and reveal that the retina may provide a more accurate representation of the visual scene than previously appreciated.



YASS: Yet Another Spike Sorter

Neural Information Processing Systems

Spike sorting is a critical first step in extracting neural signals from large-scale electrophysiological data. This manuscript describes an efficient, reliable pipeline for spike sorting on dense multi-electrode arrays (MEAs), where neural signals appear across many electrodes and spike sorting currently represents a major computational bottleneck. We present several new techniques that make dense MEA spike sorting more robust and scalable.