A Novel Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network for EEG-Based Miniature-Event-Related Potentials

Miniature asymmetric visual evoked potential (aVEP) induced by very small lateral visual stimuli is a comfortable stimulation paradigm. It could only induce a miniature potential about 0.5 μV in amplitude, which could be challenging to detect. Most decoding methods based on miniature aVEP are machine learning approaches, and deep learning methods have not yet been introduced. Therefore, this paper introduces deep learning techniques for the first time and designs a lightweight convolutional neural network. Specifically, depthwise convolution is employed to reduce the number of network parameters and extract temporal and spatial features from EEG signals. The model achieves an average classification accuracy of 78.48% on the miniature aVEP dataset, which is 1.14% higher than the previous state-of-the-art model, DCPM. Through comparison with other deep learning models in terms of parameter count, computational complexity, and classification accuracy, it is evident that the proposed model surpasses them in all these aspects The results suggest that the CNN model proposed in this study achieves high classification accuracy while demanding fewer computational resources. Although the network model we proposed is very simple, it can achieve good results in processing miniature aVEP. In future research, we will continue to improve this lightweight network to enhance its decoding performance for miniature aVEP.