# ALFEE: Adaptive Large Foundation Model for EEG Representation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06291 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.06291/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 86 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Exploring the Limits of Transfer Learning with a Unified Text-to-Text Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10683/) (2019)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14198/) (2022)
- [A Time Series is Worth 64 Words: Long-term Forecasting with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14730/) (2022)
- [ImageBind: One Embedding Space To Bind Them All](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05665/) (2023)
- [Mixed Precision Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.03740/) (2017)
- [Unified Language Model Pre-training for Natural Language Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03197/) (2019)
- [EEGNet: A Compact Convolutional Network for EEG-based Brain-Computer Interfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08024/) (2016)
- [NExT-GPT: Any-to-Any Multimodal LLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05519/) (2023)
- [Unified Training of Universal Time Series Forecasting Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02592/) (2024)
- [BEATs: Audio Pre-Training with Acoustic Tokenizers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09058/) (2022)
- [Multi-Task Deep Neural Networks for Natural Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.11504/) (2019)
- [Large Brain Model for Learning Generic Representations with Tremendous EEG Data in BCI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18765/) (2024)
- [BENDR: using transformers and a contrastive self-supervised learning task to learn from massive amounts of EEG data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.12037/) (2021)
- [UniT: Multimodal Multitask Learning with a Unified Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.10772/) (2021)
- [Byte Latent Transformer: Patches Scale Better Than Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09871/) (2024)
- [Transformer-based Spatial-Temporal Feature Learning for EEG Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11170/) (2021)
- [BrainBERT: Self-supervised representation learning for intracranial recordings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14367/) (2023)
- [EEG2Rep: Enhancing Self-supervised EEG Representation Through Informative Masked Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17772/) (2024)
- [Inter-database validation of a deep learning approach for automatic sleep scoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.10365/) (2020)
- [Improved EEG Event Classification Using Differential Energy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.02477/) (2018)
- [EEG-GNN: Graph Neural Networks for Classification of Electroencephalogram (EEG) Signals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09135/) (2021)
- [ChronoNet: A Deep Recurrent Neural Network for Abnormal EEG Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00308/) (2018)
- [OmniNet: A unified architecture for multi-modal multi-task learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07804/) (2019)
- [Brant-X: A Unified Physiological Signal Alignment Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00122/) (2024)
- [Prediction of Reaction Time and Vigilance Variability from Spatiospectral Features of Resting-State EEG in a Long Sustained Attention Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10076/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [SpecMoE: Spectral Mixture-of-Experts Foundation Model for Cross-Species EEG Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16739/) (2026)
- [PRISM-CTG: A Foundation Model for Cardiotocography Analysis with Multi-View SSL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.02917/) (2026)
- [Decoupling Time and Space: A Temporally Conditioned Refinement for EEG Source Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.06726/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While foundation models excel in text, image, and video domains, the critical biological signals, particularly electroencephalography(EEG), remain underexplored. EEG benefits neurological research with its high temporal resolution, operational practicality, and safety profile. However, low signal-to-noise ratio, inter-subject variability, and cross-paradigm differences hinder the generalization of current models. Existing methods often employ simplified strategies, such as a single loss function or a channel-temporal joint representation module, and suffer from a domain gap between pretraining and evaluation tasks that compromises efficiency and adaptability. To address these limitations, we propose the Adaptive Large Foundation model for EEG signal representation(ALFEE) framework, a novel hybrid transformer architecture with two learning stages for robust EEG representation learning. ALFEE employs a hybrid attention that separates channel-wise feature aggregation from temporal dynamics modeling, enabling robust EEG representation with variable channel configurations. A channel encoder adaptively compresses variable channel information, a temporal encoder captures task-guided evolution, and a hybrid decoder reconstructs signals in both temporal and frequency domains. During pretraining, ALFEE optimizes task prediction, channel and temporal mask reconstruction, and temporal forecasting to enhance multi-scale and multi-channel representation. During fine-tuning, a full-model adaptation with a task-specific token dictionary and a cross-attention layer boosts performance across multiple tasks. After 25,000 hours of pretraining, extensive experimental results on six downstream EEG tasks demonstrate the superior performance of ALFEE over existing models. Our ALFEE framework establishes a scalable foundation for biological signal analysis with implementation at https://github.com/xw1216/ALFEE.