Channel Adaptation for EEG Foundation Models: A Systematic Benchmark Across Architectures, Tasks, and Training Regimes

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Kokate, Kuntal, Aristimunha, Bruno, Truong, Dung, Delorme, Arnaud
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Kokate, Kuntal
Aristimunha, Bruno
Truong, Dung
Delorme, Arnaud
author_facet Kokate, Kuntal
Aristimunha, Bruno
Truong, Dung
Delorme, Arnaud
contents Scaling EEG foundation models requires pooling data across heterogeneous electrode montages, a prerequisite both for larger pretraining corpora and for downstream deployment. We present the first systematic comparison of four channel adaptation methods (Conv1d projection, spherical spline interpolation (SSI), source-space decomposition, and Riemannian re-centering) across five pretrained EEG foundation models (5M--157M parameters), five downstream tasks, and two training regimes with 10--15 random seeds each. We find that rigid-montage models (BENDR, Neuro-GPT) require external adaptation, while flexible models (EEGPT, CBraMod) match or exceed it natively when fine-tuned but benefit from external methods under frozen-encoder deployment. A probe-SFT asymmetry exists: external adaptation can cause severe negative transfer during fine-tuning of flexible models. The optimal method is architecture-dependent (Conv1d for BENDR, SSI/Riemannian for Neuro-GPT, source-space decomposition for depression detection), and 5M-parameter CBraMod outperforms models up to 31$\times$ larger on 4/5 datasets, consistent with independent findings that compact EEG-specific architectures can match larger models.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_23091
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Channel Adaptation for EEG Foundation Models: A Systematic Benchmark Across Architectures, Tasks, and Training Regimes
Kokate, Kuntal
Aristimunha, Bruno
Truong, Dung
Delorme, Arnaud
Machine Learning
Scaling EEG foundation models requires pooling data across heterogeneous electrode montages, a prerequisite both for larger pretraining corpora and for downstream deployment. We present the first systematic comparison of four channel adaptation methods (Conv1d projection, spherical spline interpolation (SSI), source-space decomposition, and Riemannian re-centering) across five pretrained EEG foundation models (5M--157M parameters), five downstream tasks, and two training regimes with 10--15 random seeds each. We find that rigid-montage models (BENDR, Neuro-GPT) require external adaptation, while flexible models (EEGPT, CBraMod) match or exceed it natively when fine-tuned but benefit from external methods under frozen-encoder deployment. A probe-SFT asymmetry exists: external adaptation can cause severe negative transfer during fine-tuning of flexible models. The optimal method is architecture-dependent (Conv1d for BENDR, SSI/Riemannian for Neuro-GPT, source-space decomposition for depression detection), and 5M-parameter CBraMod outperforms models up to 31$\times$ larger on 4/5 datasets, consistent with independent findings that compact EEG-specific architectures can match larger models.
title Channel Adaptation for EEG Foundation Models: A Systematic Benchmark Across Architectures, Tasks, and Training Regimes
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.23091