MI‐Mamba: A hybrid motor imagery electroencephalograph classification model with Mamba's global scanning

Abstract Deep learning has revolutionized electroencephalograph (EEG) decoding, with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) being a predominant tool. However, CNNs struggle with long‐term dependencies in sequential EEG data. Models like long short‐term memory and transformers improve performance but still face challenges of computational efficiency and long sequences. Mamba, a state space model–based method, excels in modeling long sequences. To overcome the limitations of existing EEG decoding models and exploit Mamba's potential in EEG analysis, we propose MI‐Mamba, a model integrating CNN with Mamba for motor imagery (MI) data decoding. MI‐Mamba processes multi‐channel EEG signals through a single convolutional layer to capture spatial features in the local temporal domain, followed by a Mamba module that processes global temporal features. A fully connected, layer‐based classifier is used to derive classification results. Evaluated on two public MI datasets, MI‐Mamba achieves 80.59% accuracy in the four‐class MI task of the BCI Competition IV 2a dataset and 84.42% in the two‐class task of the BCI Competition IV 2b dataset, while reducing parameter count by nearly six times compared to the most advanced previous models. These results highlight MI‐Mamba's effectiveness in MI decoding and its potential as a new backbone for general EEG decoding.