EEG decoding for effects of visual joint attention training on ASD patients with interpretable and lightweight convolutional neural network

Abstract

Visual joint attention, the ability to track gaze and recognize intent, plays a key role in the development of social and language skills in health humans, which is performed abnormally hard in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The traditional convolutional neural network, EEGnet, is an effective model for decoding technology, but few studies have utilized this model to address attentional training in ASD patients. In this study, EEGNet was used to decode the P300 signal elicited by training and the saliency map method was used to visualize the cognitive properties of ASD patients during visual attention. The results showed that in the spatial distribution, the parietal lobe was the main region of classification contribution, especially for Pz electrode. In the temporal information, the time period from 300 to 500 ms produced the greatest contribution to the electroencephalogram (EEG) classification, especially around 300 ms. After training for ASD patients, the gradient contribution was significantly enhanced at 300 ms, which was effective only in social scenarios. Meanwhile, with the increase of joint attention training, the P300 latency of ASD patients gradually shifted forward in social scenarios, but this phenomenon was not obvious in non-social scenarios. Our results indicated that joint attention training could improve the cognitive ability and responsiveness of social characteristics in ASD patients.