Developing Innovative Feature Extraction Techniques from the Emotion Recognition Field on Motor Imagery Using Brain–Computer Interface EEG Signals

Research on brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) advances the way scientists understand how the human brain functions. The BCI system, which is based on the use of electroencephalography (EEG) signals to detect motor imagery (MI) tasks, enables opportunities for various applications in stroke rehabilitation, neuroprosthetic devices, and communication tools. BCIs can also be used in emotion recognition (ER) research to depict the sophistication of human emotions by improving mental health monitoring, human–computer interactions, and neuromarketing. To address the low accuracy of MI-BCI, which is a key issue faced by researchers, this study employs a new approach that has been proven to have the potential to enhance motor imagery classification accuracy. The basic idea behind the approach is to apply feature extraction methods from the field of emotion recognition to the field of motor imagery. Six feature sets and four classifiers were explored using four MI classes (left and right hands, both feet, and tongue) from the BCI Competition IV 2a dataset. Statistical, wavelet analysis, Hjorth parameters, higher-order spectra, fractal dimensions (Katz, Higuchi, and Petrosian), and a five-dimensional combination of all five feature sets were implemented. GSVM, CART, LinearSVM, and SVM with polynomial kernel classifiers were considered. Our findings show that 3D fractal dimensions predominantly outperform all other feature sets, specifically during LinearSVM classification, accomplishing nearly 79.1% mean accuracy, superior to the state-of-the-art results obtained from the referenced MI paper, where CSP reached 73.7% and Riemannian methods reached 75.5%. It even performs as well as the latest TWSB method, which also reached approximately 79.1%. These outcomes emphasize that the new hybrid approach in the motor imagery/emotion recognition field improves classification accuracy when applied to motor imagery EEG signals, thus enhancing MI-BCI performance.