Cross-Subject EEG Emotion Recognition Using SSA-EMS Algorithm for Feature Extraction

This study proposes a novel SSA-EMS framework that integrates Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) with Effect-Matched Spatial Filtering (EMS), combining the noise-reduction capability of SSA with the dynamic feature extraction advantages of EMS to optimize cross-subject EEG-based emotion feature extraction. Experiments were conducted using the SEED dataset under two evaluation paradigms: “cross-subject sample combination” and “subject-independent” assessment. Random Forest (RF) and SVM classifiers were employed to perform pairwise classification of three emotional states—positive, neutral, and negative. Results demonstrate that the SSA-EMS framework achieves RF classification accuracies exceeding 98% across the full frequency band, significantly outperforming single frequency bands. Notably, in the subject-independent evaluation, model accuracy remains above 96%, confirming the algorithm’s strong cross-subject generalization capability. Experimental results validate that the SSA-EMS framework effectively captures dynamic neural differences associated with emotions. Nevertheless, limitations in binary classification and the potential for multimodal extension remain important directions for future research.