Emotion detection unveiled: A cognitive-computational synthesis of physiological models, machine learning, and datasets.

Abstract

This comprehensive survey synthesizes state-of-the-art advancements in emotion recognition based on physiological signals, specifically focusing on the paradigm shift occurring between 2021 and 2025. Crucially, we move beyond a technical review by establishing a novel Cognitive-Computational Synthesis Framework (CCSF). This framework explicitly maps multimodal physiological manifestations (e.g., electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG), and galvanic skin response (GSR)) to underlying cognitive processes, such as attentional allocation, arousal regulation, and perceptual bias, providing a theoretical foundation for explainable AI (XAI) in affective computing. We meticulously examine the transition from traditional machine learning to advanced deep learning architectures, highlighting how recent innovations in Transformers, self-supervised learning, and diffusion models have shattered previous performance plateaus. While earlier dimensional models were often limited to 70-75% accuracy, this survey details how modern architectures now achieve benchmarks exceeding 95% on seminal datasets like SEED and DREAMER. Furthermore, the survey provides a rigorous analysis of 40 key studies (identified via PRISMA protocols), evaluating them based on their validation strategies, cross-subject generalizability, and adversarial robustness. By bridging the gap between raw physiological data and cognitive theory, this work offers a strategic roadmap for the next generation of robust, interpretable, and real-time emotion recognition systems.