Interpretable Visualization and Higher-Order Dimension Reduction for ECoG Data

Abstract: ElectroCOrticoGraphy (ECoG) technology measures electrical activity in the human brain via electrodes placed directly on the cortical surface during neurosurgery. Through its capability to record activity at a fast temporal resolution, ECoG experiments have allowed scientists to better understand how the human brain processes speech. By its nature, ECoG data is difficult for neuroscientists to directly interpret for two major reasons. Firstly, ECoG data tends to be large in size, as each individual experiment yields data up to several gigabytes. Secondly, ECoG data has a complex, higher-order nature. After signal processing, this type of data may be organized as a 4-way tensor with dimensions representing trials, electrodes, frequency, and time. In this paper, we develop an interpretable dimension reduction approach called Regularized Higher Order Principal Components Analysis, as well as an extension to Regularized Higher Order Partial Least Squares, that allows neuroscientists to explore and visualize ECoG data. Our approach employs a sparse and functional Candecomp-Parafac (CP) decomposition that incorporates sparsity to select relevant electrodes and frequency bands, as well as smoothness over time and frequency, yielding directly interpretable factors. We demonstrate the performance and interpretability of our method with an ECoG case study on audio and visual processing of human speech.