Quantitative investigation on working memory patterns through EEG based on visual attention task for children with learning disability.

Abstract

Learning disabilities in children are exhibited through difficulties in reading and writing due to lack of cognitive skills. It is generally diagnosed by analyzing the behavior and processing capacity of children by understanding their academic candidature. This can also be evidenced by capturing and analyzing their working memory patterns in the brain that show the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions in children with learning disabilities. This research works with the electroencephalography (EEG) signal data from the IEEE dataport consisting of 121 participants in total, of which 61 are ADHD and 60 are normal children aged 7-12 years. The usage of these data has influenced ground truth research by providing reliable data and mitigating the challenge with real-time availability of EEG data. This manuscript focuses on classifying the dataset into categories of children, viz normal and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), using brain connectivity parameters and validation through machine learning (ML) algorithms. Children with learning disabilities undergo therapeutic interventions to manage their disability. Generally, the progress of their intellectual capability can be assessed through visual cues and the responses that the children exhibit. Rather, their differences in brain cognition need to be analyzed to realize the outcomes of therapeutical effect. In this research, the brain connectivity parameters such as power spectral density (PSD), granger causality (GC), phase slope index (PSI), partial directed coherence (PDC), and directed transmission function (DTF) are estimated, quantified, and analyzed. Further, using the measures of brain connectivity parameters, certain ML algorithms-such as the logistic regression (LR), support vector machine (SVM), decision tree (DT), the k-nearest neighbor (KNN), and random forest (RF)-along with a deep learning model, viz. deep belief networks (DBN) have been employed for validating this study. Among these models, DBN offered a model accuracy of 89.7%. Hence, this concept emphasizes the validation and effectiveness of therapeutic interventions that can support clinical evaluations in children with learning disability.