Quantifying brain connectivity signatures by means of polyconnectomic scoring

  • A broad range of neuropsychiatric disorders are associated with alterations in macroscale brain circuitry and connectivity. Identifying consistent brain patterns underlying these disorders by means of structural and functional MRI has proven challenging, partly due to the vast number of tests required to examine the entire brain, which can lead to an increase in missed findings. In this study, we propose polyconnectomic score (PCS) as a metric designed to quantify the presence of disease-related brain connectivity signatures in connectomes. PCS summarizes evidence of brain patterns related to a phenotype across the entire landscape of brain connectivity into a subject-level score. We evaluated PCS across four brain disorders (autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Alzheimer’s disease) and 14 studies encompassing ∼35,000 individuals. Our findings consistently show that patients exhibit significantly higher PCS compared to controls, with effect sizes that go beyond other single MRI metrics ([min, max]: Cohen’s d = [0.30, 0.87], AUC = [0.58, 0.73]). We further demonstrate that PCS serves as a valuable tool for stratifying individuals, for example within the psychosis continuum, distinguishing patients with schizophrenia from their first-degree relatives (d = 0.42, p = 4 x 10−3, FDR-corrected), and first-degree relatives from healthy controls (d = 0.34, p = 0.034, FDR-corrected). We also show that PCS is useful to uncover associations between brain connectivity patterns related to neuropsychiatric disorders and mental health, psychosocial factors, and body measurements.

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Metadaten
Author:Ilan LibedinskyORCiD, Koen HelwegenORCiD, Laura Guerrero SimónORCiD, Marius GruberORCiD, Jonathan ReppleORCiDGND, Tilo KircherORCiDGND, Udo DannlowskiORCiDGND, Martijn P. van den HeuvelORCiD
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-794492
URL:https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.26.559327v1
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.26.559327
Parent Title (English):bioRxiv
Publisher:bioRxiv
Document Type:Preprint
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2023/09/27
Date of first Publication:2023/09/27
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2024/07/16
Issue:2023.09.26.559327v1
Edition:Version 1
Page Number:33
HeBIS-PPN:52053557X
Institutes:Medizin
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - CC BY-NC - Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell 4.0 International