Investigating variational phase-amplitude coupling in EEG-based emotion recognition

A novel framework variational phase-amplitude coupling was proposed to recognize emotions. The variational mode decomposition method was applied for its reliability and nonlinear adaptation. Nonlinear challenge was designed to verify the robustness of the proposed method. Modulation index was used to calculate the intensity of the coupling. Our results showed that the modulation indexes tend to be driven by the δ/θ phase than the α and β phase in general, which implies the importance of θ phase in the emotion processing. Besides, the α activity in the AF brain area seems to serve as a potential feature for the neutral emotion, whereas the β rhythm is associated with the negative emotion. Meanwhile, we also found the bipolar synchronizations move toward the central lobe with the increasing amplitude frequencies.