+In general, re-referencing is best performed before running ICA and then left unchanged afterward. ICA learns a spatial unmixing model that is specific to the reference used during training. Changing the reference after decomposition applies a linear transform to the channel data that is inconsistent with the learned unmixing matrix. Althought the transformation is also applied to the ICA decomposition, the ICA activations may no longer strictly represent independent sources. In practice, this can degrade component interpretability and may introduce numerical issues, especially when the new reference reduces data rank, as occurs with average reference. For these reasons, EEGLAB will warn you against re-referencing after ICA. If a different reference is required for downstream analysis, the recommended approach is to apply that reference before ICA and recompute the decomposition so that the weights remain valid for the transformed data.
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