Functional factor modeling of brain connectivity
Kyle Stanley, Nicole Lazar, Matthew Reimherr
The Annals of Applied Statistics · 2025 · Volume 19 · Issue 2
Abstract
Many fMRI analyses examine functional connectivity, or statistical dependencies among remote brain regions. Factor analysis, which parsimoniously describes correlations between many observed variables, offers a natural framework in which to study such dependencies. However, multivariate factor models break down when applied to functional and spatiotemporal data, like fMRI. We present a factor model for discretely-observed multidimensional functional data that is well suited to the study of functional connectivity. Unlike classical factor models which decompose a multivariate observation into a “common” term that captures covariance between observed variables and an uncorrelated “idiosyncratic” term that captures variance unique to each observed variable, our model decomposes a functional observation into two uncorrelated components: a “global” term that captures long-range dependencies and a “local” term that captures short-range dependencies. We show that if the global covariance is smooth with finite rank and the local covariance is banded with potentially infinite rank, then this decomposition is identifiable. Under these conditions, recovery of the global covariance amounts to rank-constrained matrix completion, which we exploit to formulate consistent estimators. Through simulations and an application to resting-state fMRI data, we demonstrate that our approach offers several distinct advantages over popular functional connectivity methods.
Keywords
factor analysis, fMRI, Functional connectivity, Functional data analysis, Matrix completion
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