Domain adaptive deep possibilistic clustering for EEG-based emotion recognition

Emotion recognition based on electroencephalogram (EEG) faces substantial challenges. The variability of neural signals among different subjects and the scarcity of labeled data pose obstacles to the generalization ability of traditional domain adaptation (DA) methods. Existing approaches, especially those relying on the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) technique, are often highly sensitive to domain mean shifts induced by noise. To overcome these limitations, a novel framework named Domain Adaptive Deep Possibilistic clustering (DADPc) is proposed. This framework integrates deep domain-invariant feature learning with possibilistic clustering, reformulating Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) as a one-centroid clustering task under a fuzzy entropy-regularized framework. Moreover, the DADPc incorporates adaptive weighted loss and memory bank strategies to enhance the reliability of pseudo-labels and cross-domain alignment. The proposed framework effectively mitigates noise-induced domain shifts while maintaining feature discriminability, offering a robust solution for EEG-based emotion recognition in practical applications. Extensive experiments conducted on three benchmark datasets (SEED, SEED-IV, and DEAP) demonstrate the superior performance of DADPc in emotion recognition tasks. The results show significant improvements in recognition accuracy and generalization capability across different experimental protocols, including cross-subject and cross-session scenarios. This research contributes to the field by providing a comprehensive approach that combines deep learning with possibilistic clustering, advancing the state-of-the-art in cross-domain EEG analysis.