Identifying relevant asymmetry features of EEG for emotion processing

Abstract

The left and right hemispheres of the brain process emotion differently. Neuroscientists have proposed two models to explain this difference. The first model states that the right hemisphere is dominant over the left to process all emotions. In contrast, the second model states that the left hemisphere processes positive emotions, whereas the right hemisphere processes negative emotions. Previous studies have used these asymmetry models to enhance the classification of emotions in machine learning models. However, little research has been conducted to explore how machine learning models can help identify associations between hemisphere asymmetries and emotion processing. To address this gap, we conducted two experiments using a subject-independent approach to explore how the asymmetry of the brain hemispheres is involved in processing happiness, sadness, fear, and neutral emotions. We analyzed electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from 15 subjects collected while they watched video clips evoking these four emotions. We derived asymmetry features from the recorded EEG signals by calculating the log ratio between the relative energy of symmetrical left and right nodes. Using the asymmetry features, we trained four binary logistic regressions, one for each emotion, to identify which features were more relevant to the predictions. The average AUC-ROC across the 15 subjects was 56.2, 54.6, 51.6, and 58.4% for neutral, sad, fear, and happy, respectively. We validated these results with an independent dataset, achieving comparable AUC-ROC values. Our results showed that brain lateralization was observed primarily in the alpha frequency bands, whereas for the other frequency bands, both hemispheres were involved in emotion processing. Furthermore, the logistic regression analysis indicated that the gamma and alpha bands were the most relevant for predicting emotional states, particularly for the lateral frontal, parietal, and temporal EEG pairs, such as FT7-FT8, T7-T8, and TP7-TP8. These findings provide valuable insights into which brain areas and frequency bands need to be considered when developing predictive models for emotion recognition.

Keywords: affective computing; brain hemisphere asymmetry; electroencephalogram; emotion recognition; interpretable predictive models; logistic regression.