Research

Built on Rigorous Science

Every claim we make is backed by transparent methodology, conservative validation, and publicly available datasets. No shortcuts, no inflated metrics.

Methodology

Validation Approach

LOSO Cross-Validation

Leave-one-subject-out cross-validation iterates through every subject in the dataset, training on all remaining subjects and testing on the held-out individual. This eliminates data leakage between train and test sets at the subject level, the most conservative validation strategy for diagnostic ML, simulating real clinical deployment where each patient is entirely new to the model.

Z-Score Normalization

Individual EEG spectral features are normalized against population-level baselines derived from the CHBMP normative dataset (282 healthy subjects). This transforms raw power values into standardised deviation scores, reducing the impact of inter-individual variability, recording conditions, and hardware differences on classification performance.

Why These Choices Matter

Much of the published EEG-ML literature reports inflated performance using k-fold cross-validation, which can leak within-subject information across folds. LOSO provides honest, clinically meaningful estimates. Z-score normalization against an independent normative dataset further ensures that models learn disorder-related patterns rather than site- or device-specific artifacts.

Results

Performance Results

All results obtained using LOSO cross-validation. These are preliminary research metrics, not clinical performance claims.

Neuraxis-Child v1.0

Research Phase

AUC

~0.845

Balanced Accuracy

~0.802

Validation

LOSO CV

Dataset

IEEE ADHD

Age Range

5-17 years

Neuraxis-Adult v1.0

Research Phase

AUC

~0.727

Balanced Accuracy

-

Validation

LOSO CV

Dataset

TDBRAIN (N=72)

Age Range

18-35 years

Full validation report including sensitivity, specificity and MCC in preparation. All reported metrics are preliminary research results. Research Use Only (RUO).

Data

Research Datasets

IEEE ADHD Dataset

Full dataset · Ages 5-17

Public paediatric EEG dataset with clinical ADHD diagnoses. Chosen because it provides clinician-confirmed diagnostic labels (not self-report) and has been independently used in multiple published ADHD-EEG studies, enabling direct comparison with existing literature.

TDBRAIN

N=72 subset · Ages 18-35

Adult EEG database from the University of Twente. Selected to test whether a model trained on paediatric data can generalise to adult populations recorded on different hardware. The 72-subject subset isolates the ADHD-relevant adult age range for focused validation.

CHBMP

282 subjects · Normative reference

Cuban Human Brain Mapping Project. Large normative EEG dataset used to establish population-level spectral baselines. Enables Z-score normalization of individual patient features against a healthy reference distribution, improving cross-site and cross-device generalisation.

Coming Soon

Publications

Manuscripts in preparation. Target journals include the Journal of Neural Engineering and IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering (TNSRE).

Commitment to Open Science

Synaption is committed to scientific reproducibility and transparency. All validation is performed on publicly available datasets. We report conservative LOSO metrics rather than optimistic k-fold estimates. Methodology details are documented to enable independent verification.