SATrans-Net: Sparse Attention Transformer for EEG-based motor imagery decoding

Brain-computer interface (BCI) technology decodes electroencephalography (EEG) signals to identify motor intentions associated with motor imagery (MI), offering assistive solutions for individuals with motor impairments. However, current deep learning methods often overlook the long-sequence nature of EEG-MI signals, leading to limited feature extraction and reduced decoding accuracy. To address this, we propose SATrans-Net, an end-to-end framework that models long-range dependencies in EEG-MI signals to enhance decoding performance. SATrans-Net uses two-dimensional depthwise separable convolution (2D-DSC) to extract spatiotemporal features and incorporates a Top-K Sparse Attention (TKSA) mechanism into the Transformer architecture, improving long-range modeling while reducing computational cost. By fusing local and global features, the model achieves accurate classification via a fully connected layer. For interpretability, Grad-CAM is applied to generate Class Activation Topography (CAT) maps, visualizing spatial attention over cortical regions. Cross-session evaluations show that SATrans-Net achieves average accuracies of 84.72%, 89.76%, and 96.79% on the BCI IV-2a, BCI IV-2b, and High-Gamma datasets, respectively, outperforming existing methods. Ablation studies further verify the critical role of the TKSA module. Overall, SATrans-Net demonstrates high decoding accuracy and strong interpretability, paving the way for the application of computational techniques in biomedical signal processing. Source Code: https://github.com/Jasmin-Tianhua/EEG-research_SATrans-Net.