A method to estimate longitudinal change patterns in functional network connectivity of the developing brain relevant to psychiatric problems, cognition, and age.

AIM: To develop an approach to evaluate multiple overlapping brain functional change patterns (FCPs) in functional network connectivity (FNC) and apply to study developmental changes in brain function.

INTRODUCTION: Functional network connectivity, the network analog of functional connectivity, is commonly used to capture the intrinsic functional relationships among brain networks. Ongoing research on longitudinal changes of intrinsic functional connectivity across whole-brain functional networks has proven useful for characterizing age-related changes, but to date, there has been little focus on capturing multivariate patterns of FNC change with brain development.

METHODS: In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to evaluate multiple overlapping FCPs by utilizing FNC matrices. We computed FNC matrices from the large-scale Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) data using fully automated spatially constrained independent component analysis (ICA). We next evaluated changes in these patterns over a two-year period using a second-level ICA on the FNC change maps.

RESULTS: Our proposed approach reveals several highly structured (modular) functional change patterns and significant results including strong brain functional connectivity between visual (VS) and sensorimotor (SM) domains that increase with age. We also find several FCPs that are associated with longitudinal changes of psychiatric problems, cognition, and age in the developing brain. Interestingly, FCP cross-covariation, reflecting coupling between maximally independent FCPs, also shows significant differences between upper and lower quartile loadings for longitudinal changes in age, psychiatric problems, and cognition scores, as well as baseline age in the developing brain. FCP patterns and results were also found to be highly reliable based on analysis of data collected in a separate scan session.

CONCLUSION: In sum, our results show evidence of consistent multivariate patterns of functional change in emerging adolescents and the proposed approach provides a useful and general tool to evaluate covarying patterns of whole-brain functional changes in longitudinal data.