# Multimodal Pretraining for Generalizable EEG Representation Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.21384 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.21384/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [CBraMod: A Criss-Cross Brain Foundation Model for EEG Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07236/) (2024)
- [Uncovering the structure of clinical EEG signals with self-supervised learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.16104/) (2020)
- [EEG Foundation Models: A Critical Review of Current Progress and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.11783/) (2025)
- [BrainRVQ: A High-Fidelity EEG Foundation Model via Dual-Domain Residual Quantization and Hierarchical Autoregression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16951/) (2026)
- [DistilCLIP-EEG: Enhancing Epileptic Seizure Detection Through Multi-modal Learning and Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13497/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Electroencephalography (EEG) models used for epilepsy are often limited to specific datasets and tasks. This limited approach can make it challenging to apply these models across different datasets or in various situations. However, recent studies in foundation models and self-supervised learning suggest that an adaptable EEG backbone could support a range of EEG related tasks. In this study, we have developed a multimodal EEG foundation model that combines a raw signal encoder based on the Mamba architecture, a Vision Transformer (ViT)-style encoder for time-frequency data, and a lightweight encoder for text, all within a shared embedding space. The pretraining process relies on several innovative techniques, such as masked modeling, cross-view contrastive alignment, and temporal consistency losses. These methods are designed to create rich, seizure-relevant representations without requiring labeled data. To assess the efficacy and generalization of our pretrained model, we fine-tuned it on the canonical CHB-MIT seizure detection benchmark and additional seizure detection datasets, and conducted extensive experiments comparing different model variants. On the standard CHB-MIT split, our best single model achieved an AUROC of 0.874, and an ensemble variant reached 0.878 AUROC, representing state-of-the-art performance on this benchmark. In addition to standard train-test splits, we evaluated performance under a leave-one-subject-out (LOSO) protocol, which is rarely reported in prior EEG seizure modeling work and highlights the difficulty of patient-independent seizure detection, with a mean LOSO balanced accuracy of 0.558 across 19 subjects. Across datasets and evaluation settings, our multimodal foundation model enabled robust seizure detection and straightforward adaptation to new seizure detection scenarios, while also supporting interpretable seizure localization.