ENH: allow Epochs to hold trials of different duration

doc/changes/dev/14210.newfeature.rst

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Allow :class:`mne.Epochs` to hold trials of different duration by passing ``tmin`` and/or ``tmax`` as arrays with one entry per event, with :meth:`mne.Epochs.as_fixed` to obtain a fixed-duration copy spanning their union together with the number of epochs contributing at each time point, and with :meth:`mne.Epochs.plot` browsing them at their own lengths rather than padding, demonstrated in :ref:`tut-variable-duration-epochs`, by `Sina Esmaeili`_.

doc/changes/names.inc

@@ -425,6 +425,7 @@
 .. _Simon Kornblith: https://simonster.com
 .. _Simon M. Hofmann: https://github.com/SHEscher
 .. _Simon-Shlomo Poil: https://github.com/simon-shlomo
+.. _Sina Esmaeili: https://github.com/snesmaeili
 .. _Sondre Foslien: https://github.com/sondrfos
 .. _Sophie Herbst: https://github.com/SophieHerbst
 .. _Sourav Singh: https://github.com/souravsingh

doc/conf.py

@@ -779,8 +779,8 @@ def fix_sklearn_inherited_docstrings(app, what, name, obj, options, lines):
     (  # BaseRaw attributes are documented in Raw
         "py:obj",
         "(filename|metadata|proj|times|tmax|tmin|annotations|ch_names"
-        "|compensation_grade|duration|filenames|first_samp|first_time"
-        "|last_samp|n_times|proj|times|tmax|tmin)",
+        "|compensation_grade|duration|durations|filenames|first_samp|first_time"
+        "|last_samp|n_times|proj|times|tmax|tmin|variable_duration)",
     ),
 ]
 suppress_warnings = [

mne/channels/channels.py

@@ -636,7 +636,12 @@ def _pick_drop_channels(self, idx, *, verbose=None):
         else:  # All others (Evoked, Epochs, Raw) have chs axis=-2
             axis = -2
         if hasattr(self, "_data"):  # skip non-preloaded Raw
-            self._data = self._data.take(idx, axis=axis)
+            if isinstance(self._data, list):
+                # replacing the contents rather than the attribute keeps `_data`
+                # an ndarray everywhere else this mixin is used
+                self._data[:] = [epoch.take(idx, axis=axis) for epoch in self._data]
+            else:
+                self._data = self._data.take(idx, axis=axis)
         else:
             assert isinstance(self, BaseRaw) and not self.preload