Analysis of neuroimaging data (e.g., Magnetic Resonance Imaging, structural and functional MRI) plays an important role in monitoring brain dynamics and probing brain structures. Neuroimaging data are multi-featured and non-linear by nature, and it is a natural way to organise these data as tensors prior to performing automated analyses such as discrimination of neurological disorders like Parkinson's Disease (PD) and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, the existing approaches are often subject to performance bottlenecks (e.g., conventional feature extraction and deep learning based feature construction), as these can lose the structural information that correlates multiple data dimensions or/and demands excessive empirical and application-specific settings. This study proposes a Deep Factor Learning model on a Hilbert Basis tensor (namely, HB-DFL) to automatically derive latent low-dimensional and concise factors of tensors. This is achieved through the application of multiple Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in a non-linear manner along all possible dimensions with no assumed a priori knowledge. HB-DFL leverages the Hilbert basis tensor to enhance the stability of the solution by regularizing the core tensor to allow any component in a certain domain to interact with any component in the other dimensions. The final multi-domain features are handled through another multi-branch CNN to achieve reliable classification, exemplified here using MRI discrimination as a typical case. A case study of MRI discrimination has been performed on public MRI datasets for discrimination of PD and ADHD. Results indicate that 1) HB-DFL outperforms the counterparts in terms of FIT, mSIR and stability (mSC and umSC) of factor learning; 2) HB-DFL identifies PD and ADHD with an accuracy significantly higher than state-of-the-art methods do. Overall, HB-DFL has significant potentials for neuroimaging data analysis applications with its stability of automatic construction of structural features.

EEG-based tinnitus classification is a valuable tool for tinnitus diagnosis, research, and treatments. Most current works are limited to a single dataset where data patterns are similar. But EEG signals are highly non-stationary, resulting in model's poor generalization to new users, sessions or datasets. Thus, designing a model that can generalize to new datasets is beneficial and indispensable. To mitigate distribution discrepancy across datasets, we propose to achieve Disentangled and Side-aware Unsupervised Domain Adaptation (DSUDA) for cross-dataset tinnitus diagnosis. A disentangled auto-encoder is developed to decouple class-irrelevant information from the EEG signals to improve the classifying ability. The side-aware unsupervised domain adaptation module adapts the class-irrelevant information as domain variance to a new dataset and excludes the variance to obtain the class-distill features for the new dataset classification. It also aligns signals of left and right ears to overcome inherent EEG pattern difference. We compare DSUDA with state-of-the-art methods, and our model achieves significant improvements over competitors regarding comprehensive evaluation criteria. The results demonstrate our model can successfully generalize to a new dataset and effectively diagnose tinnitus.

Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based applications in Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs, or Human-Machine Interfaces, HMIs), diagnosis of neurological disease, rehabilitation,etc, rely on supervised techniques such as EEG classification that requires given class labels or markers. Incomplete or incorrectly labeled or unlabeled EEG data are increasing with the ever-expanding amount of EEG data generated by such applications and the ambiguities these generate degrade the performance of supervised techniques. To address the challenging task of clustering EEG data with limitedprioriknowledge, we introduce a semi-supervised graph embedding EEG clustering approach termedConsEEGcwith multiple constraints,i.e., label-transformed connectivity constraints that constrains the connection or disconnection among EEG data, compactness-and-scatter constraint that constrains the intra-cluster compactness and inter-cluster scatter of EEG clusters, and fairness constraint that constrains the fair ratio of elements between EEG clusters, to make best use of limitedprioriknowledge of EEG data and to achieve better EEG clustering results.ConsEEGcis conducted with an optimization objective function that integrates pseudo label learning, least-square error minimization and multiple constraints, and it can quickly converge to local optima. The experiments demonstrate thatConsEEGccan efficiently yield good clustering results on various types of real-world EEG datasets, compared to state-of-the-art standard unsupervised and semi-supervised EEG/time series clustering algorithms.

A novel approach to multi-microphone acoustic source localisation based on spiking neural networks is presented. We demonstrate that a two microphone system connected to a spiking neural network can be used to localise acoustic sources based purely on inter microphone timing differences, with no need for manually configured delay lines. A two sensor example is provided which includes 1) a front end which converts the acoustic signal to a series of spikes, 2) a hidden layer of spiking neurons, 3) an output layer of spiking neurons which represents the location of the acoustic source. We present details on training the network, and evaluation of its performance in quiet and noisy conditions. The system is trained on two locations, and we show that the lateralisation accuracy is 100% when presented with previously unseen data in quiet conditions. We also demonstrate the network generalises to modulation rates and background noise on which it was not trained.

Cochlear implants (CIs) are devices capable of restoring hearing function in profoundly-deaf patients to an acceptable degree of performance. An essential processing step in any cochlear implant is frequency analysis, which is usually performed via banks of filters. Here, we simulate and test the suitability of different filters and filterbank architectures for CIs with respect to their performance in speech intelligibility. Four different filters were implemented in an established model of CI hearing, the tone-excited vocoder, namely: GTF (Gammatone Filter), DAPGF (Differentiated All-Pole GTF), OZGF (One-Zero GTF) and BUTF (Butterworth). Three filterbank parameters, the filter order ( N), the filter quality factor ( Q) and the number of channels ( Ch), and their combinations were tested using objective and subjective metrics. Simulation results show that all filters tested are suitable for CI implementation, but that the choice of Q and N parameter values is crucial. For most conditions, optimal ( N,Q) combinations were within few units away from the combination (2, 4).

A measure to predict speech intelligibility in unilateral and bi-lateral cochlear implant (CI) users is proposed that does not need a priori information (i.e. is non-intrusive), such as the room acoustics. Such measure, termed BiSIMCI, combines an equalization-cancellation stage together with a modulation frequency estimation stage. Simulated and actual subjective data from CI users were used to validate the proposed mea-sure. The actual CI subjective data consisted of speech re-ception thresholds (SRTs) collected in anechoic rooms with a total of 28 target/interferer spatial configurations. The simu-lated CI subjective data were generated by running the intrusive algorithm by Culling et al. [Ear & Hearing 33 (6), 673-682 (2012)] across 109 different target/interferer conditions from two environments, one anechoic and one highly reverberant room (RT60 = 0.89s). The experimental results indicate that the proposed non-intrusive measure provides reliable predic-tions when compared with both actual and simulated SRT; an average correlation of 0.94 was reported for these conditions, and an average correlation of 0.97 was obtained when some in-trusive assumptions were made. 1.