{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,18]],"date-time":"2026-08-18T14:05:13Z","timestamp":1787061913094,"version":"build-2736575974"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,18]],"date-time":"2026-06-18T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1781740800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001691","name":"Japan Society for the Promotion of Science","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["JP24K03260"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JP24K03260"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001691","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"award":["JP24K03260"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JP24K03260"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/00hhkn466","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100002241","name":"Japan Science and Technology Agency","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["JPMJSP2109"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JPMJSP2109"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100002241","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"award":["JPMJSP2109"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JPMJSP2109"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/00097mb19","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Brain Sciences"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Background\/Objectives: Advancements in neuroscience and machine learning have increasingly enabled brain pattern recognition based on bio-signal measurements, such as electroencephalography (EEG). These developments support next-generation technologies, including brain\u2013computer interfaces (BCIs) and AI-assisted systems. However, volume conduction (VC) effects remain a major source of contamination in EEG recordings, affecting both univariate analyses and functional connectivity estimation. Methods: In this work, we propose a VC mitigation method that explicitly models and suppresses VC components in the observed functional networks. Specifically, the observed functional network is decomposed into a matrix capturing only VC-related components (i.e., components attributed to volume conduction) and a residual matrix, where the residual is regarded as a proxy for a VC-mitigated functional network that better reflects the underlying functional interactions. The VC component matrix is modeled using a decay function parameterized by the inter-electrode distance matrix, capturing the dominant spatial bias induced by VC. To estimate these parameters, we introduce supervised channel importance, quantified as the mutual information between experimental labels and channel signals, as a proxy for task-relevant neural activity. The parameters are optimized such that the unsupervised node importance derived from the VC-mitigated functional network, defined as the average node strength, aligns with the supervised channel importance. Results: Evaluation results using a deep-learning framework demonstrate that, compared with the observed functional network, the VC-mitigated functional network improves classification performance in brain pattern recognition tasks.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/brainsci16060649","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,19]],"date-time":"2026-06-19T14:37:42Z","timestamp":1781879862000},"page":"649","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Enhancing EEG-Based Brain Pattern Recognition Through Functional-Network-Level Volume Conduction Mitigation: Spatially Informed Decay Modeling\u2013Residual Correction"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Yuzeng","family":"Xu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33, Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1179-0987","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Sho","family":"Otsuka","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Frontier Medical Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33, Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan"},{"name":"Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33, Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan"},{"name":"Department of Medical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33, Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9957-325X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Seiji","family":"Nakagawa","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Frontier Medical Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33, Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan"},{"name":"Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33, Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan"},{"name":"Department of Medical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33, Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan"},{"name":"Med-Tech Link Center, Chiba University Hospital, 1-8-1, Inohana, Chuo-ku, Chiba 260-8677, Japan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,18]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"14681","DOI":"10.1007\/s00521-021-06352-5","article-title":"Deep Learning Techniques for Classification of Electroencephalogram (EEG) Motor Imagery (MI) Signals: A Review","volume":"35","author":"Altaheri","year":"2023","journal-title":"Neural Comput. 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