Transparent EEG Analysis: Leveraging Autoencoders, Bi-LSTMs, and SHAP for Improved Neurodegenerative Diseases Detection

This study explores the use of deep learning techniques for classifying EEG signals in the context of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). We propose a novel classification pipeline that combines autoencoders for feature extraction and bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) networks for analyzing patterns over time in EEG data. Given the complexity and high dimensionality of EEG signals, we employed an autoencoder to reduce data dimensionality while preserving key diagnostic features. The Bi-LSTM model effectively identified subtle temporal patterns in brain activity that are indicative of AD and FTD. To enhance interpretability, we applied SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), providing insights into how individual features contribute to the model’s predictions. We evaluated our approach on a publicly available EEG dataset from OpenNeuro, which includes resting-state EEG recordings from 88 elderly participants—36 with AD, 23 with FTD, and 29 cognitively normal controls. EEG provides a non-invasive, cost-effective tool for brain monitoring, but presents challenges such as noise sensitivity and inter-subject variability. Despite these challenges, our approach achieved 98% accuracy while maintaining transparency, making it a promising tool for clinical applications in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases.