EEG-based affective brain-computer interfaces: recent advancements and future challenges

Objective. As one of the most popular brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigms, affective BCI (aBCI) decodes the human emotional states from brain signals and imposes necessary feedback to achieve neural regulation when negative emotional states (i.e. depression, anxiety) are detected, which are considered as the two basic functions of aBCI systems. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is the scalp reflection of neural activities and has been regarded as the gold standard of emotional effects. Recently, rapid progresses have been made for emotion recognition and regulation with the purpose of constructing a high-performance closed-loop EEG-based aBCI system. Therefore, it is necessary to make a timely review for aBCI research by summarizing the current progresses as well as challenges and opportunities, to draw the attention from both academia and industry. Toward this goal, a systematic literature review was performed to summarize not only the recent progresses in emotion recognition and regulation from the perspective of closed-loop aBCI, but also the main challenges and future research focuses to narrow the gap between the current research and real applications of aBCI systems.Approach. A systematic literature review on EEG-based emotion recognition and regulation was performed on Web of Science and related databases, resulting in more than 100 identified studies. These studies were analyzed according to the experimental paradigm, emotion recognition methods in terms of different scenarios, and the applications of emotion recognition in diagnosis and regulation of affective disorders.Main results. Based on the literature review, advancements for EEG-based aBCI research were extensively summarized from six aspects including the 'emotion elicitation paradigms and data sets', 'inner exploration of EEG information', 'outer extension of fusing EEG with other data modalities', 'cross-scene emotion recognition', 'emotion recognition by considering real scenarios', and 'diagnosis and regulation of affective disorders'. In addition, future opportunities were concluded by focusing on the main challenges in hindering the aBCI system to move from laboratory to real applications. Moreover, the neural mechanisms and theoretical basis behind EEG emotion recognition and regulation are also introduced to provide support for the advancements and challenges in aBCI.Significance. This review summarizes the current practices and performance outcomes in emotion recognition and regulation. Future directions in response to the existing challenges are provided with the expectation of guiding the aBCI research to focus on the necessary key technologies of aBCI systems in practical deployment.