[Eeglablist] Join the NeurIPS 2025 EEG Foundation Challenge at NeurIPS 2025 - Competition start August 15th

[Seyed Yahya Shirazi]

Dear EEGLAB Community,

We're excited to invite you to participate in The EEG Foundation Challenge: From Cross-Task to Cross-Subject EEG Decoding, accepted to the NeurIPS 2025 Competition Track. This challenge offers a unique opportunity to advance EEG research using the largest publicly available EEG dataset.

Challenge Overview:
This supervised regression challenge requires teams to predict trial-by-trial response time to an SSEVP task (Challenge 1), and four continuous psychopathology scores (p-factor, internalizing, externalizing, and attention) from EEG recordings across multiple experimental paradigms (Challenge 2). The goal is to develop foundation models that can generalize across different subjects and tasks without expensive recalibration.

What Makes This Special:
- Dataset: The HBN-EEG dataset includes EEG recordings from over 3,000 participants across six distinct cognitive tasks (see dataset dashboard: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://neuromechanist.github.io/data/hbn-insights/__;!!Mih3wA!Cya4cIu5kubCEr-UAs-N54kvdWL_N9C9KfLE2Ig1rtjepCMnx5ETsrK-hWfcdKsjki8M9kh0APCfTk7_piVa$ )
- Scale: High-resolution EEG data from participants aged 5-21 years, formatted in BIDS (Brain Imaging Data Structure) and annotated with HED (Hierarchical Event Descriptors)
- Accessibility: Data from 3000+ participants freely available on NEMAR and OpenNeuro via direct download, open-source APIs such as EEGDash, Amazon S3, etc.

Rewards:
- $2,500 cash prizes for top 3 teams (sponsored by Meta)
- Travel costs and NeurIPS 2025 registration covered for main authors of top 3 teams
- Spotlight talk opportunity at the NeurIPS Workshop "Foundation Models for the Brain and Body"

Key Challenge Areas:
- Cross-Task Transfer Learning: Developing models that transfer knowledge from passive to active EEG tasks
- Subject Invariant Representation: Creating robust representations that generalize across subjects

Resources:
- Challenge website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://eeg2025.github.io__;!!Mih3wA!Cya4cIu5kubCEr-UAs-N54kvdWL_N9C9KfLE2Ig1rtjepCMnx5ETsrK-hWfcdKsjki8M9kh0APCfTt-01quI$ 
- Starter Kit available with detailed instructions
- Workshop: December 6-7, 2025

This challenge addresses critical needs in EEG research and offers an unprecedented opportunity to work with high-quality, large-scale data. Whether you're an experienced EEG researcher, ML expert, or collaborative team, we encourage and appreciate your participation.

As the main curator of the HBN-EEG dataset and core challenge organizer, I'm thrilled to see how this collaboration between leading researchers and institutions can advance our field. The dataset's availability through NEMAR and its BIDS/HED formatting reflects our community's commitment to open, reproducible science.

Visit https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://eeg2025.github.io__;!!Mih3wA!Cya4cIu5kubCEr-UAs-N54kvdWL_N9C9KfLE2Ig1rtjepCMnx5ETsrK-hWfcdKsjki8M9kh0APCfTt-01quI$  to learn more and register!

Sincerely,
Seyed (Yahya) Shirazi, Ph.D.
SCCN, INC, UC San Diego
Core Organizer, EEG 2025 Foundation Challenge