GL-LFGNN:A Global-Local Dual-branch Causal Graph Neural Network Based on Liang-Kleeman Information Flow for EEG Emotion Recognition

Abstract

EEG-based emotion recognition holds significant promise for objective diagnosis of mood disorders. Graph neural networks (GNNs) have emerged as the dominant paradigm for modeling inter-channel dependencies in EEG, yet existing approaches rely on symmetric adjacency matrices derived from spatial proximity or functional correlations that fundamentally capture statistical associations rather than directed causal influences, which conflicts with the inherently asymmetric, causally-driven nature of neural information flow. To bridge this gap, we propose GL-LFGNN, a Global-Local Dual-branch Causal Graph Neural Network grounded in Liang-Kleeman information flow theory. Unlike Granger causality that merely assesses temporal precedence, our approach rigorously quantifies causal strength from a dynamical systems perspective, yielding neurophysiologically interpretable directed graphs. A dual-branch architecture further integrates whole-brain connectivity with region-specific processing aligned to established functional neuroanatomy. On the MEEG dataset, GL-LFGNN achieves 86.17% (Arousal) and 86.71% (Valence) accuracy with only 37K parameters -- approximately 10% of the current state-of-the-art -- demonstrating that principled causal modeling can simultaneously enhance interpretability, generalization, and computational efficiency. Code will be released.