""" ===================================================== Tutorial: Within-Session Splitting on Real MI Dataset ===================================================== """ # Authors: Thomas, Kooiman, Radovan Vodila, Jorge Sanmartin Martinez, and Paul Verhoeven # # License: BSD (3-clause) ############################################################################### # The justification and goal for within-session splitting # -------------------------------------------------------- # In short, because we want to prevent the model from recognizing the subject # and learning subject-specific representations instead of focusing on the task at hand. # # In brain-computer interface (BCI) research, careful data splitting is critical. # A naive train_test_split can easily lead to misleading results, especially in small EEG datasets, # where models may accidentally learn to recognize subjects instead of decoding the actual brain task. # Each brain produces unique signals, and unless we're careful, the model can exploit these as shortcuts — # leading to artificially high test accuracy that doesn’t generalize in practice. # # To avoid this, we use within-session splitting, where training and testing are done # on different trials from the same session. This ensures the model is evaluated under commonly used, # consistent conditions while still preventing overfitting to trial-specific noise. # # This approach forms a critical foundation in the MOABB evaluation framework, # which supports three levels of model generalization: # # - Within-session: test generalization across trials within a single session # - Cross-session: test generalization across different recording sessions # - Cross-subject: test generalization across different brains # # Where Within-session and cross-session are generalized across the same subject, cross-subject is generalized between (groups of) subjects. # # Each level decreases in specialization, moving from highly subject-specific models, # to those that can generalize across individuals. # # This tutorial focuses on within-session evaluation to establish a reliable # baseline for model performance before attempting more challenging generalization tasks. ############################################################################### # Importing the necessary libraries # --------------------------------- import warnings import matplotlib.pyplot as plt # Standard imports import pandas as pd import seaborn as sns # MNE + sklearn for pipeline from mne.decoding import CSP from sklearn.discriminant_analysis import LinearDiscriminantAnalysis as LDA from sklearn.pipeline import make_pipeline import moabb # MOABB components from moabb.datasets import BNCI2014_001 from moabb.evaluations.splitters import WithinSessionSplitter from moabb.paradigms import LeftRightImagery # Suppress warnings and enable informative logging warnings.filterwarnings("ignore") moabb.set_log_level("info") ############################################################################### # Load the dataset # ---------------- # In this example we use 3 subjects of the :class:`moabb.datasets.BNCI2014_001` dataset. dataset = BNCI2014_001() dataset.subject_list = [1, 2, 3] ############################################################################### # Extract data: epochs (X), labels (y), and trial metadata (meta) # --------------------------------------------------------------- # For this dataset we use the :class:`moabb.paradigms.LeftRightImagery` paradigm. # Additionally, we use the `get_data` method to download, preprocess, epoch, and label the data. paradigm = LeftRightImagery() # This call downloads (if needed), preprocesses, epochs, and labels the data X, y, meta = paradigm.get_data(dataset=dataset, subjects=dataset.subject_list) # Inspect the shapes: X is trials × channels × timepoints; y is labels; meta is info print("X shape (trials, channels, timepoints):", X.shape) print("y shape (trials,):", y.shape) print("meta shape (trials, info columns):", meta.shape) print(meta.head()) # shows subject/session for each trial ############################################################################### # Visualising a single epoch. # --------------------------- # Plot a single epoch (e.g., the first trial), to see what's in this dataset. (limiting to 3 channels for simplicity sake). plt.figure(figsize=(10, 4)) plt.plot(X[0][0:3].T) # Transpose to plot channels over time plt.title("Epoch 0: EEG Channels Over Time") plt.xlabel("Timepoints") plt.ylabel("Amplitude") plt.legend([f"Channel {i + 1}" for i in range(3)], loc="upper right") plt.tight_layout() plt.show() ############################################################################### # Build a classification pipeline: CSP to LDA # ------------------------------------------- # We use Common Spatial Patterns (CSP) finds spatial filters that maximize variance difference between classes. # And then use Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) as a simple linear classifier on the extracted CSP features. pipe = make_pipeline( CSP(n_components=6, reg=None), # reduce to 6 CSP components LDA(), # classify based on these features ) pipe # noqa: B018 # shown as the last expression in a Sphinx-gallery cell ############################################################################### # Instantiate WithinSessionSplitter # --------------------------------- # We want 5-fold cross-validation (CV) within each subject × session grouping wss = WithinSessionSplitter(n_folds=5, shuffle=True, random_state=404) print(f"Splitter config: folds={wss.n_folds}, shuffle={wss.shuffle}") # How many total splits? equals n_folds × (num_subjects × sessions per subject) total_folds = wss.get_n_splits(meta) print("Total folds (num_subjects × sessions × n_folds):", total_folds) # If wss is applied to a dataset where a subject has only one session, # the splitter will skip that subject silently. Therefore, we raise an error. if wss.get_n_splits(meta) == 0: raise RuntimeError("No splits generated: check that each subject has ≥2 sessions.") ############################################################################### # Manual evaluation loop: train/test each fold # --------------------------------------------- # We'll collect one row per fold: which subject/session was held out and its score records = [] for fold_id, (train_idx, test_idx) in enumerate(wss.split(y, meta)): # Slice our epoch array and labels X_train, X_test = X[train_idx], X[test_idx] y_train, y_test = y[train_idx], y[test_idx] # Fit the CSP+LDA pipeline on the training fold pipe.fit(X_train, y_train) # Evaluate on the held-out trials score = pipe.score(X_test, y_test) # Identify which subject & session these test trials come from # (all test_idx in one fold share the same subject/session) subject_held = meta.iloc[test_idx]["subject"].iat[0] session_held = meta.iloc[test_idx]["session"].iat[0] # Record information for later analysis records.append( { "fold": fold_id, "subject": subject_held, "session": session_held, "score": score, } ) # Create a DataFrame of fold results df = pd.DataFrame(records) # Add a new column to indicate whether the data is train or test df["split"] = df["session"].apply(lambda x: "test" if "test" in x else "train") # Show the first few rows: one entry per fold print(df.head()) ############################################################################### # Summary of results # ------------------- # We can quickly see per-subject, per-session performance: # We see subject 2’s Session 1 has lower mean accuracy, suggesting session variability. # Note: you could plot these numbers to visually compare sessions, # but here we print them to focus on the splitting logic itself. summary = df.groupby(["subject", "session"])["score"].agg(["mean", "std"]).reset_index() print("\nSummary of within-session fold scores (mean ± std):") print(summary) ########################################################################## # Visualisation of the results # ----------------------------- df["subject"] = df["subject"].astype(str) plt.figure(figsize=(8, 6)) sns.barplot(x="score", y="subject", hue="session", data=df, orient="h", palette="viridis") plt.xlabel("Classification accuracy") plt.ylabel("Subject") plt.title("Within-session CSP+LDA performance") plt.tight_layout() plt.show() ############################################################################### # Visualisation of the data split # -------------------------------- # For our 3 subjects, we see that each subject has 5 folds of training data. def plot_subject_split(ax, df): """Create a bar plot showing the split of subject data into train and test.""" colors = ["#3A6190", "#DDF2FF"] # Colors for train and test # Count the number of train and test samples for each subject subject_counts = df.groupby(["subject", "split"]).size().unstack(fill_value=0) # Plot the train and test counts for each subject subject_counts.plot(kind="barh", stacked=True, color=colors, ax=ax, width=0.7) ax.set( xlabel="Number of samples", ylabel="Subject", title="Train-Test Split by Subject" ) ax.legend(["Train", "Test"], loc="lower right") ax.invert_yaxis() return ax # Create a new figure for the subject split plot fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(8, 6)) # Add the subject split plot to the figure plot_subject_split(ax, df)