MB-STFormer: A Multi-Band Spectral-Temporal Transformer with Efficient Attention for Enhanced EEG-Based Fatigue Detection

Accurate detection of driver fatigue is critical for preventing traffic accidents. Although electroencephalogram (EEG) signals provide a robust physiological indicator of fatigue, effectively capturing their intricate spatiotemporal-spectral dynamics poses significant challenges. In this paper, we propose MB-STFormer, a novel deep neural network designed for EEG-based fatigue detection, which systematically integrates neurophysiological priors into deep feature learning. The proposed MB-STFormer employs a multi-branch frequency-aware module to extract spatiotemporal features from EEG signals, with each branch dedicated to a distinct frequency sub-band. By leveraging adaptive temporal convolution kernel sizes tailored to each sub-band, the model adeptly captures the inherent rhythmic patterns and temporal dynamics unique to different frequency components. Additionally, we introduce an Efficient Additive Attention mechanism to aggregate global contextual information, thereby addressing the over-smoothing of subtle yet critical features often encountered with conventional transformer self-attention mechanisms. Extensive experiments conducted on three publicly available datasets demonstrate that MB-STFormer achieves state-of-the-art performance while maintaining superior interpretability and generalizability. The proposed framework offers a promising solution for real-world fatigue monitoring systems.