Single Trial Classification of per-stimulus EEG between Different Speed Accuracy Tradeoffs Instruction

The speed-accuracy tradeoff represents a cornerstone concept in cognitive processing, highlighting the inherent trade-off between decision-making speed and accuracy. Patients may have different speed-accuracy strategies during their neurologic consultation due to differences in understanding of instructions or increased diagnostic time. Despite extensive investigations into the neural mechanisms underpinning speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT), the classification of neural data to differentiate between distinct SAT strategies remains largely unexplored. This study bridges this critical gap by implementing a deep learning framework to classify single-trial EEG signals based on participants' instructed response strategies-either prioritizing speed or accuracy and leveraging a dataset from 20 participants engaged in a mirror-image judgment task. The data underwent preprocessing and were subsequently transformed using continuous wavelet transformation to extract time-frequency features. Employing a channel-stacking technique, we organized the EEG data into RGB-like images, which were then input into a RegNet convolutional neural network for classification. Ten-fold cross-validation results demonstrated that the occipital region achieved the highest classification accuracy (85.37%), followed by the parietal (82.97%), frontal (80.46%), and central regions (78.57%). This study not only validates the feasibility of single-trial EEG classification in distinguishing between speed and accuracy strategies but also highlights its potential applications in adaptive brain-computer interfaces and cognitive neuroscience research.Clinical Relevance- This study provides a novel method for real-time identification of cognitive strategies (speed vs. accuracy prioritization) via EEG, offering clinicians a tool to tailor neurofeedback or rehabilitation protocols based on individualized neural signatures.