mne-tools / mne-tools/mne-python

Decoding: Don't recommend highpass filtering for decoding approaches

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Description

I recently stumbled across a paper by van Driel et al. (2021) that analyses highpass filtering for decoding approaches. It claims that highpass filtering introduces spurious findings and can artificially bloat accuracy scores due to temporal smearing/leakage of information. I tested this in our own decoding dataset and indeed, the higher our HP is, the better our accuracy scores become (sometimes even before stim-onset, indicating spurious information leakage). This is of special importance when making claims about temporal characteristics of the signal.

In i.e. this example for decoding, a rather high 2 Hz HP is used.
I think it might be good to remove it from the example and mention the problem of using HP filtering for decoding. However, there might be reasons to keep it in the current form, and it would be premature to change the tutorials just based on this paper. What do you think?

Most of the examples use a HP filter:
https://mne.tools/stable/auto_examples/decoding/index.html

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Research direction

Start with the linked decoding tutorial and the decoding examples index, then inspect which examples use high-pass filtering. Review the cited van Driel et al. paper and compare its concerns with the examples’ stated temporal goals. Done should be a documented decision about the filtering guidance, with affected examples updated if needed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
documentation, machine-learning
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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