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Calhoun, V. D.

Publications and source records attributed to Calhoun, V. D..

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

Identifying Neuropsychiatric Disorder Subtypes and Subtype-dependent Variation in Diagnostic Deep Learning Classifier Performance

Clinicians and developers of deep learning-based neuroimaging clinical decision support systems (CDSS) need to know whether those systems will perform well for specific individuals. However, relatively few methods provide this capability. Identifying neuropsychiatric disorder subtypes for which CDSS may have varying performance could offer a solution. Dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) is often used to study disorders and develop neuroimaging classifiers. Unfortunately, few studies have identified neurological disorder subtypes using dFNC. In this study, we present a novel approach with which we identify 4 states of dFNC activity and 4 schizophrenia subtypes based on their time spent in each state. We also show how the performance of an explainable diagnostic deep learning classifier is subtype-dependent. We lastly examine how the dFNC features used by the classifier vary across subtypes. Our study provides a novel approach for subtyping disorders that (1) has implications for future scientific studies and (2) could lead to more reliable CDSS.

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Towards Greater Neuroimaging Classification Transparency via the Integration of Explainability Methods and Confidence Estimation Approaches

The field of neuroimaging has increasingly sought to develop artificial intelligence-based models for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorder automated diagnosis and clinical decision support. However, if these models are to be implemented in a clinical setting, transparency will be vital. Two aspects of transparency are (1) confidence estimation and (2) explainability. Confidence estimation approaches indicate confidence in individual predictions. Explainability methods give insight into the importance of features to model predictions. In this study, we integrate confidence estimation and explainability approaches for the first time. We demonstrate their viability for schizophrenia diagnosis using resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) data. We compare two confidence estimation approaches: Monte Carlo dropout (MCD) and MC batch normalization (MCBN). We combine them with two gradient-based explainability approaches, saliency and layer-wise relevance propagation (LRP), and examine their effects upon explanations. We find that MCD often adversely affects model gradients, making it ill-suited for integration with gradient-based explainability methods. In contrast, MCBN does not affect model gradients. Additionally, we find many participant-level differences between regular explanations and the distributions of explanations for combined explainability and confidence estimation approaches. This suggests that a similar confidence estimation approach used in a clinical context with explanations only output for the regular model would likely not yield adequate explanations. We hope that our findings will provide a starting point for the integration of the two fields, provide useful guidance for future studies, and accelerate the development of transparent neuroimaging clinical decision support systems.

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Examining Reproducibility of EEG Schizophrenia Biomarkers Across Explainable Machine Learning Models

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a neuropsychiatric disorder that adversely effects millions of individuals globally. Current diagnostic efforts are symptom based and hampered due to the variability in symptom presentation across individuals and overlap of symptoms with other neuropsychiatric disorders. This spawns the need for (1) biomarkers to aid with empirical SZ diagnosis and (2) the development of automated diagnostic approaches that will eventually serve in a clinical decision support role. In this study, we train random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM) models to differentiate between individuals with schizophrenia and healthy controls using spectral features extracted from resting state EEG data. We then perform two explainability analyses to gain insight into key frequency bands and channels. In our explainability analyses, we examine the reproducibility of SZ biomarkers across models with the goal of identifying those that have potential clinical implications. Our model performance results are well above chance level indicating the broader utility of spectral information for SZ diagnosis. Additionally, we find that the RF prioritizes the upper {gamma}-band and is robust to loss of information from individual electrodes, while the SVM prioritizes the and {theta}-bands and P4 and T8 electrodes. It is our hope that our findings will inform future efforts towards the empirical diagnosis of SZ and towards the development of clinical decision support systems for SZ diagnosis.

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An Approach for Estimating Explanation Uncertainty in fMRI dFNC Classification

In recent years, many neuroimaging studies have begun to integrate gradient-based explainability methods to provide insight into key features. However, existing explainability approaches typically generate a point estimate of importance and do not provide insight into the degree of uncertainty associated with explanations. In this study, we present a novel approach for estimating explanation uncertainty for convolutional neural networks (CNN) trained on neuroimaging data. We train a CNN for classification of individuals with schizophrenia (SZs) and controls (HCs) using resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) data. We apply Monte Carlo batch normalization (MCBN) and generate an explanation following each iteration using layer-wise relevance propagation (LRP). We then examine whether the resulting distribution of explanations differs between SZs and HCs and examine the relationship between MCBN-based LRP explanations and regular LRP explanations. We find a number of significant differences in LRP relevance for SZs and HCs and find that traditional LRP values frequently diverge from the MCBN relevance distribution. This study provides a novel approach for obtaining insight into the level of uncertainty associated with gradient-based explanations in neuroimaging and represents a significant step towards increasing reliability of explainable deep learning methods within a clinical setting.

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Machine Learning Predicts Treatment Response in Bipolar & Major Depressive Disorders

Diagnosis of bipolar disorder (BD) patients with complex symptoms presents a challenge to clinicians. Patients tend to spend more time in a depressive state than a manic state. In such complex cases, the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), which is not based on pathophysiology, can lead to misdiagnosis as major depressive disorder (MDD) and an imperfect or even harmful medication response. A biologically-based classification algorithm is needed to improve the accuracy of diagnosis. Osuch et al. (2018) presented a kernel support vector machine (SVM) algorithm to predict the medication-class of response from new patient samples whose diagnoses were unclear. Here we also utilize the kernel support vector machine (SVM) algorithm but with a few novel contributions. We applied the robust, fully automated neuromark independent component analysis (ICA) framework to extract comparable features in a multi-dataset setting and learn a kernel function for support vector machine (SVM) on multiple feature subspaces. The neuromark framework successfully replicates the prior result with 95.45% accuracy (sensitivity 90.24%, specificity 92.3%). To further evaluate the generalizability of our approach, we incorporated two additional datasets comprising bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) patients. We validated the trained algorithm on these datasets, resulting in a testing accuracy of up to 89% (sensitivity 0.88, specificity 0.89) without using site or scanner harmonization techniques. We also translated the model to predict improvement scores of major depressive disorder (MDD) with up to 70% accuracy. This approach reveals some salient biological markers of medication-class of response within mood disorders. HighlightsO_LIWe demonstrate a DSM-free approach for predicting treatment response from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. C_LIO_LIWe identify several replicable biomarkers using the approach. C_LIO_LIOur work has potential for clinical application by replacing trial-and-error in treating complex psychiatric disorders. C_LI

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A Systematic Approach for Explaining Time and Frequency Features Extracted by CNNs from Raw EEG Data

In recent years, the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for raw electroencephalography (EEG) analysis has grown increasingly common. However, relative to earlier machine learning and deep learning methods with manually extracted features, CNNs for raw EEG analysis present unique problems for explainability. As such, a growing group of methods have been developed that provide insight into the spectral features learned by CNNs. However, spectral power is not the only important form of information within EEG, and the capacity to understand the roles of specific multispectral waveforms identified by CNNs could be very helpful. In this study, we present a novel model visualization-based approach that adapts the traditional CNN architecture to increase interpretability and combines that inherent interpretability with a systematic evaluation of the model via a series of novel explainability methods. Our approach evaluates the importance of spectrally distinct first-layer clusters of filters before examining the contributions of identified waveforms and spectra to cluster importance. We evaluate our approach within the context of automated sleep stage classification and find that, for the most part, our explainability results are highly consistent with clinical guidelines. Our approach is the first to systematically evaluate both waveform and spectral feature importance in CNNs trained on EEG data.

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Novel Methods for Elucidating Modality Importance in Multimodal Electrophysiology Classifiers

Multimodal classification is increasingly common in biomedical informatics studies. Many such studies use deep learning classifiers with raw data, which makes explainability difficult. As such, only a few studies have applied explainability methods, and new methods are needed. In this study, we propose sleep stage classification as a testbed for method development and train a convolutional neural network with electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculogram, and electromyogram data. We then present a global approach that is uniquely adapted for electrophysiology analysis. We further present two local approaches that can identify subject-level differences in explanations that would be obscured by global methods and that can provide insight into the effects of clinical and demographic variables upon the patterns learned by the classifier. We find that EEG is globally the most important modality for all sleep stages, except non-rapid eye movement stage 1 and that local subject-level differences in importance arise. We further show that sex, followed by medication and age had significant effects upon the patterns learned by the classifier. Our novel methods enhance explainability for the growing field of multimodal classification, provide avenues for the advancement of personalized medicine, and yield novel insights into the effects of demographic and clinical variables upon classifiers.

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A Model Visualization-based Approach for Insight into Waveforms and Spectra Learned by CNNs

Recent years have shown a growth in the application of deep learning architectures such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), to electrophysiology analysis. However, using neural networks with raw time-series data makes explainability a significant challenge. Multiple explainability approaches have been developed for insight into the spectral features learned by CNNs from EEG. However, across electrophysiology modalities, and even within EEG, there are many unique waveforms of clinical relevance. Existing methods that provide insight into waveforms learned by CNNs are of questionable utility. In this study, we present a novel model visualization-based approach that analyzes the filters in the first convolutional layer of the network. To our knowledge, this is the first method focused on extracting explainable information from EEG waveforms learned by CNNs while also providing insight into the learned spectral features. We demonstrate the viability of our approach within the context of automated sleep stage classification, a well-characterized domain that can help validate our approach. We identify 3 subgroups of filters with distinct spectral properties, determine the relative importance of each group of filters, and identify several unique waveforms learned by the classifier that were vital to the classifier performance. Our approach represents a significant step forward in explainability for electrophysiology classifiers, which we also hope will be useful for providing insights in future studies. Clinical RelevanceOur approach can assist with the development and validation of clinical time-series classifiers.

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Multimodal IVA fusion for detection of linked neuroimaging biomarkers

With the increasing availability of large-scale multimodal neuroimaging datasets, it is necessary to develop data fusion methods which can extract cross-modal features. A general framework, multidataset independent subspace analysis (MISA), has been developed to encompass multiple blind source separation approaches and identify linked cross-modal sources in multiple datasets. In this work we utilized the multimodal independent vector analysis model in MISA to directly identify meaningful linked features across three neuroimaging modalities -- structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), resting state functional MRI and diffusion MRI -- in two large independent datasets, one comprising of control subjects and the other including patients with schizophrenia. Results show several linked subject profiles (the sources/components) that capture age-associated decline, schizophrenia-related biomarkers, sex effects, and cognitive performance. For sources associated with age, both shared and modality-specific brain-age deltas were evaluated for association with non-imaging variables. In addition, each set of linked sources reveals a corresponding set of multi-tissue spatial patterns that can be studied jointly.

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A low-resource reliable pipeline to democratize multi-modal connectome estimation and analysis

Connectomics--the study of brain networks--provides a unique and valuable opportunity to study the brain. Research in human connectomics, leveraging functional and diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), is a resource-intensive practice. Typical analysis routines require significant computational capabilities and subject matter expertise. Establishing a pipeline that is low-resource, easy to use, and off-the-shelf (can be applied across multifarious datasets without parameter tuning to reliably estimate plausible connectomes), would significantly lower the barrier to entry into connectomics, thereby democratizing the field by empowering a more diverse and inclusive community of connectomists. We therefore introduce MRI to Graphs (m2g). To illustrate its properties, we used m2g to process MRI data from 35 different studies ({approx} 6,000 scans) from 15 sites without any manual intervention or parameter tuning. Every single scan yielded an estimated connectome that adhered to established properties, such as stronger ipsilateral than contralateral connections in structural connectomes, and stronger homotopic than heterotopic correlations in functional connectomes. Moreover, the connectomes estimated by m2g are more similar within individuals than between them, suggesting that m2g preserves biological variability. m2g is portable, and can run on a single CPU with 16 GB of RAM in less than a couple hours, or be deployed on the cloud using its docker container. All code is available on https://github.com/neurodata/m2g and documentation is available on docs.neurodata.io/m2g.

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A Novel Activation Maximization-based Approach for Insight into Electrophysiology Classifiers

Spectral analysis remains a hallmark approach for gaining insight into electrophysiology modalities like electroencephalography (EEG). As the field of deep learning has progressed, more studies have begun to train deep learning classifiers on raw EEG data, which presents unique problems for explainability. A growing number of studies have presented explainability approaches that provide insight into the spectral features learned by deep learning classifiers. However, existing approaches only attribute importance to different frequency bands. Most of the methods cannot provide insight into the actual spectral values or the relationship between spectral features that models have learned. Here, we present a novel adaptation of activation maximization for electrophysiology time-series that generates samples that indicate the features learned by classifiers by optimizing their spectral content. We evaluate our approach within the context of EEG sleep stage classification with a convolutional neural network, and we find that our approach is able to identify spectral patterns known to be associated with each sleep stage. We also find surprising results suggesting that our classifier may have prioritized the use of eye and motion artifact when identifying Awake samples. Our approach is the first adaptation of activation maximization to the domain of raw electrophysiology classification. Additionally, our approach has implications for explaining any classifier trained on highly dynamic, long time-series.

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A Gradient-based Spectral Explainability Method for EEG Deep Learning Classifiers

The automated feature extraction capabilities of deep learning classifiers have promoted their broader application to EEG analysis. In contrast to earlier machine learning studies that used extracted features and traditional explainability approaches, explainability for classifiers trained on raw data is particularly challenging. As such, studies have begun to present methods that provide insight into the spectral features learned by deep learning classifiers trained on raw EEG. These approaches have two key shortcomings. (1) They involve perturbation, which can create out-of-distribution samples that cause inaccurate explanations. (2) They are global, not local. Local explainability approaches can be used to examine how demographic and clinical variables affected the patterns learned by the classifier. In our study, we present a novel local spectral explainability approach. We apply it to a convolutional neural network trained for automated sleep stage classification. We apply layer-wise relevance propagation to identify the relative importance of the features in the raw EEG and subsequently examine the frequency domain of the explanations to determine the importance of each canonical frequency band locally and globally. We then perform a statistical analysis to determine whether age and sex affected the patterns learned by the classifier for each frequency band and sleep stage. Results showed that {delta}, {beta}, and {gamma} were the overall most important frequency bands. In addition, age and sex significantly affected the patterns learned by the classifier for most sleep stages and frequency bands. Our study presents a novel spectral explainability approach that could substantially increase the level of insight into classifiers trained on raw EEG.

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Moving Beyond the 'CAP' of the Iceberg: Intrinsic Connectivity Networks in fMRI are Continuously Engaging and Overlapping

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging is currently the mainstay of functional neuroimaging and has allowed researchers to identify intrinsic connectivity networks (aka functional networks) at different spatial scales. However, little is known about the temporal profiles of these networks and whether it is best to model them as continuous phenomena in both space and time or, rather, as a set of temporally discrete events. Both categories have been supported by series of studies with promising findings. However, a critical question is whether focusing only on time points presumed to contain isolated neural events and disregarding the rest of the data is missing important information, potentially leading to misleading conclusions. In this work, we argue that brain networks identified within the spontaneous blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal are not limited to temporally sparse burst moments and that these event present time points (EPTs) contain valuable but incomplete information about the underlying functional patterns. We focus on the default mode and show evidence that is consistent with its continuous presence in the BOLD signal, including during the event absent time points (EATs), i.e., time points that exhibit minimum activity and are the least likely to contain an event. Moreover, our findings suggest that EPTs may not contain all the available information about their corresponding networks. We observe distinct default mode connectivity patterns obtained from all time points (AllTPs), EPTs, and EATs. We show evidence of robust relationships with schizophrenia symptoms that are both common and unique to each of the sets of time points (AllTPs, EPTs, EATs), likely related to transient patterns of connectivity. Together, these findings indicate the importance of leveraging the full temporal data in functional studies, including those using event-detection approaches.

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Brain charts for the human lifespan

Over the past few decades, neuroimaging has become a ubiquitous tool in basic research and clinical studies of the human brain. However, no reference standards currently exist to quantify individual differences in neuroimaging metrics over time, in contrast to growth charts for anthropometric traits such as height and weight1. Here, we built an interactive resource to benchmark brain morphology, www.brainchart.io, derived from any current or future sample of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. With the goal of basing these reference charts on the largest and most inclusive dataset available, we aggregated 123,984 MRI scans from 101,457 participants aged from 115 days post-conception through 100 postnatal years, across more than 100 primary research studies. Cerebrum tissue volumes and other global or regional MRI metrics were quantified by centile scores, relative to non-linear trajectories2 of brain structural changes, and rates of change, over the lifespan. Brain charts identified previously unreported neurodevelopmental milestones3; showed high stability of individual centile scores over longitudinal assessments; and demonstrated robustness to technical and methodological differences between primary studies. Centile scores showed increased heritability compared to non-centiled MRI phenotypes, and provided a standardised measure of atypical brain structure that revealed patterns of neuroanatomical variation across neurological and psychiatric disorders. In sum, brain charts are an essential first step towards robust quantification of individual deviations from normative trajectories in multiple, commonly-used neuroimaging phenotypes. Our collaborative study proves the principle that brain charts are achievable on a global scale over the entire lifespan, and applicable to analysis of diverse developmental and clinical effects on human brain structure. Furthermore, we provide open resources to support future advances towards adoption of brain charts as standards for quantitative benchmarking of typical or atypical brain MRI scans.

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Multiframe Evolving Dynamic Functional Connectivity (EVOdFNCs): A Method for Constructing and Investigating Functional Brain Motifs

The study of brain network connectivity as a time-varying property began relatively recently and to date has remained primarily concerned with capturing a handful of discrete static states that characterize connectivity as measured on a timescale shorter than that of the full scan. Capturing group-level representations of temporally evolving patterns of connectivity is a challenging and important next step in fully leveraging the information available in large resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) studies. We introduce a flexible, extensible data-driven framework for the stable identification of group-level multiframe (movie-style) dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) states. Our approach employs uniform manifold approximation and embedding (UMAP) to produce a continuity-preserving planar embedding of high-dimensional time-varying measurements of whole-brain functional network connectivity. Planar linear exemplars summarizing dominant dynamic trends across the population are computed from local linear approximations to the 2D embedded trajectories. A high-dimensional representation of each 2D exemplar segment is obtained by averaging the dFNC observations corresponding to the n planar nearest neighbors of {tau} evenly spaced points along the 2D line segment representation (where n is the UMAP number-of-neighbors parameter and {tau} is the temporal duration of trajectory segments being approximated). Each of the 2D exemplars thus "lifts" to a multiframe high-dimensional dFNC trajectory of length {tau}. The collection of high-dimensional temporally evolving dFNC representations (EVOdFNCs) derived in this manner are employed as dynamic basis objects with which to characterize observed high-dimensional dFNC trajectories, which are then expressed as weighted combination of these basis objects. Our approach yields new insights into anomalous patterns of fluidly varying whole brain connectivity that are significantly associated with schizophrenia as a broad diagnosis as well as with certain symptoms of this serious disorder. Importantly, we show that relative to conventional hidden Markov modeling with single-frame unvarying dFNC summary states, EVOdFNCs are more sensitive to positive symptoms of schizophrenia including hallucinations and delusions, suggesting a more dynamic characterization is needed to help illuminate such a complex brain disorder.

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An Explainable Deep Learning Approach for Multimodal Electrophysiology Classification

In recent years, more biomedical studies have begun to use multimodal data to improve model performance. As such, there is a need for improved multimodal explainability methods. Many studies involving multimodal explainability have used ablation approaches. Ablation requires the modification of input data, which may create out-of-distribution samples and may not always offer a correct explanation. We propose using an alternative gradient-based feature attribution approach, called layer-wise relevance propagation (LRP), to help explain multimodal models. To demonstrate the feasibility of the approach, we selected automated sleep stage classification as our use-case and trained a 1-D convolutional neural network (CNN) with electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculogram (EOG), and electromyogram (EMG) data. We applied LRP to explain the relative importance of each modality to the classification of different sleep stages. Our results showed that across all samples, EEG was most important, followed by EOG, and EMG. For individual sleep stages, EEG and EOG had higher relevance for classifying awake and non-rapid eye movement 1 (NREM1). EOG was most important for classifying REM, and EEG was most relevant for classifying NREM2-NREM3. Also, LRP gave consistent levels of importance to each modality for correctly classified samples across folds and inconsistent levels of importance for incorrectly classified samples. Our results demonstrate the additional insight that gradient-based approaches can provide relative to ablation methods and highlight their feasibility for explaining multimodal electrophysiology classifiers.

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Decentralized Brain Age Estimation using MRI Data

Recent studies have demonstrated that neuroimaging data can be used to predict brain age, as it captures information about the neuroanatomical and functional changes the brain undergoes during development and the aging process. However, researchers often have limited access to neuroimaging data because of its challenging and expensive acquisition process, thereby limiting the effectiveness of the predictive model. Decentralized models provide a way to build more accurate and generalizable prediction models, bypassing the traditional data-sharing methodology. In this work, we propose a decentralized method for brain age estimation and evaluate it on three different feature sets, including both volumetric and voxelwise structural MRI data as well as resting functional MRI data. The results demonstrate that a decentralized brain age model can achieve similar performance compared to the models trained with all the data in one location.

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Dynamic functional connectivity links with treatment response of electroconvulsive therapy in major depressive disorder

BackgroundElectroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) is one of the most effective treatments for major depressive disorder (DEP). There is recently increasing attention to evaluate ECTs effect on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI). This study aims to compare rs-fMRI of DEP patients with healthy participants, investigate whether dynamic functional network connectivity network (dFNC) estimated from rs-fMRI predicts the ECT outcome, and explore the effect of ECT on brain network states. MethodResting-state fMRI data were collected from 119 patients with depression or DEP (76 females), and 61 Healthy (HC) participants (34 females) with an age mean of 52.25 (N=180) years old. The pre-ECT and post-ECT Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) were 25.59{+/-}6.14 and 11.48{+/-}9.07, respectively. Twenty-four independent components from default mode (DMN) and cognitive control network (CCN) were extracted using group-independent component analysis from pre-ECT and post-ECT rs-fMRI. Then, the sliding window approach was used to estimate the pre-and post-ECT dFNC of each participant. Next, k-means clustering was separately applied to pre-ECT dFNC and post-ECT dFNC to assess three distinct states from each participant. We calculated the amount of time each individual spends in each state, called occupancy rate or OCR. Next, we compared OCR values between HC and DEP participants. We also calculated the partial correlation between pre-ECT OCRs and HDRS change while controlling for age, gender, number of treatment, and site. Finally, we evaluated the effectiveness of ECT by comparing pre-and post-ECT OCR of DEP and HC participants. ResultsThe main findings include: 1) DEP patients had significantly lower OCR values than the HC group in a state, where connectivity between CCN and DMN was relatively higher than other states (corrected p= 0.015), 2) Pre-ECT OCR of state, with more negative connectivity between CCN and DMN components, predicted the HDRS changes (R=0.23 corrected p=0.03). This means that those DEP patients who spend less time in this state showed more HDRS change, and 3) The post-ECT OCR analysis suggested that ECT increased the amount of time DEP patients spend in state 2 (corrected p=0.03). Finally, we found ECT increases the total traveled distance in DEP. ConclusionOur finding suggests that dFNC features, estimated from CCN and DMN, show promise as a predictive biomarker of the ECT outcome of DEP patients. Also, this study identified a possible underlying mechanism associated with the ECT effect in DEP patients.

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