# HEDN: A Hard-Easy Dual Network with Source Reliability Assessment for Cross-Subject EEG Emotion Recognition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06782 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.06782/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Domain-Adversarial Training of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.07818/) (2015)
- [Prototypical Networks for Few-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.05175/) (2017)
- [Supervised Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11362/) (2020)
- [Co-teaching: Robust Training of Deep Neural Networks with Extremely Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06872/) (2018)
- [EEG-Based Emotion Recognition Using Regularized Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.07835/) (2019)
- [Multi-source Distilling Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11554/) (2019)
- [Contrastive Learning of Subject-Invariant EEG Representations for Cross-Subject Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.09559/) (2021)
- [EEG based Emotion Recognition: A Tutorial and Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11279/) (2022)
- [MS-MDA: Multisource Marginal Distribution Adaptation for Cross-subject and Cross-session EEG Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07740/) (2021)
- [SWL-Adapt: An Unsupervised Domain Adaptation Model with Sample Weight Learning for Cross-User Wearable Human Activity Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00724/) (2022)
- [GMSS: Graph-Based Multi-Task Self-Supervised Learning for EEG Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01030/) (2022)
- [EEGMatch: Learning with Incomplete Labels for Semi-Supervised EEG-based Cross-Subject Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06496/) (2023)
- [Enhancing Cross-Dataset EEG Emotion Recognition: A Novel Approach with Emotional EEG Style Transfer Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16540/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cross-subject electroencephalography (EEG) emotion recognition remains a major challenge in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) due to substantial inter-subject variability. Multi-Source Domain Adaptation (MSDA) offers a potential solution, but existing MSDA frameworks typically assume equal source quality, leading to negative transfer from low-reliability domains and prohibitive computational overhead due to multi-branch model designs. To address these limitations, we propose the Hard-Easy Dual Network (HEDN), a lightweight reliability-aware MSDA framework. HEDN introduces a novel Source Reliability Assessment (SRA) mechanism that dynamically evaluates the structural integrity of each source domain during training. Based on this assessment, sources are routed to two specialized branches: an Easy Network that exploits high-quality sources to construct fine-grained, structure-aware prototypes for reliable pseudo-label generation, and a Hard Network that utilizes adversarial training to refine and align low-quality sources. Furthermore, a cross-network consistency loss aligns predictions between branches to preserve semantic coherence. Extensive experiments conducted on SEED, SEED-IV, and DEAP datasets demonstrate that HEDN achieves state-of-the-art performance across both cross-subject and cross-dataset evaluation protocols while reducing adaptation complexity.