Single-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) is a cost-effective, comfortable, and non-invasive method for monitoring brain activity, widely adopted by researchers, consumers, and clinicians. The increasing number and proportion of articles on single-channel EEG underscore its growing potential. This paper provides a comprehensive review of single-channel EEG, focusing on development trends, devices, datasets, signal processing methods, recent applications, and future directions. Definitions of bipolar and unipolar configurations in single-channel EEG are clarified to guide future advancements. Applications mainly span sleep staging, emotion recognition, educational research, and clinical diagnosis. Ongoing advancements of single-channel EEG in AI-based EEG generation techniques suggest potential parity or superiority over multichannel EEG performance.
View on arXiv@article{li2025_2407.14850,
title={ A Tale of Single-channel Electroencephalogram: Devices, Datasets, Signal Processing, Applications, and Future Directions },
author={ Yueyang Li and Weiming Zeng and Wenhao Dong and Di Han and Lei Chen and Hongyu Chen and Zijian Kang and Shengyu Gong and Hongjie Yan and Wai Ting Siok and Nizhuan Wang },
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.14850},
year={ 2025 }
}