NeuroAct: Advancing EEG Analysis and Decoding via Dual-Loop Autonomous Research

Overview & Synopsis

EEG analysis and decoding underpin brain-computer interfaces, cognitive assessment, and sleep monitoring. Fixed pipelines and reward-driven search do not explicitly determine how signal structure, representations, predictor behavior, and training dynamics contribute to performance or generalization gaps, leaving intervention choice underdetermined. We introduce NeuroAct, an autonomous research agent framework for EEG analysis and decoding. NeuroAct implements dual-loop autonomous research across EEG foundation models, task-specific predictors, and model combinations. In an inner loop, research, development, and review roles use evidence on signal structure, representations, predictor behavior, and training dynamics to test hypotheses, select analyses or interventions, and refine candidates using performance, stability, and cost feedback. An outer loop distills outcomes into conditional, testable recommendations with task and model conditions, then validates and revises them on subsequent tasks.We evaluate four settings: (A) EEG General Analysis, (B) Cross-task Model Optimization, (C) Single-task Open Research, and (D) Collaborative Prediction. In Setting A, NeuroAct's 80.88 macro-average exceeds BrainAgent's 63.13 by 17.75 points. In Setting B, NeuroAct raises EEGPT's mean balanced accuracy (BA) by 7.34 points and HBN Pearson's (r) from 0.6894 to 0.7362; in Setting C, it improves ADFTD BA by 16.33 points; and in Setting D, it raises Workload BA from 79.69% to 85.02%. Experience reuse raises BCIC-IV-2a BA from 34.66% to 50.81% while reducing LLM tokens by 64.02%, indicating recommendations improve cross-task performance. NeuroAct enables evidence-guided EEG research improved by cross-task experience.