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Application of Granger Causality Analysis of the Directed Functional Connection in Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment

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Published on: August 7, 2017

Functional Causal Mediation Analysis With an Application to Brain Connectivity.

Martin A Lindquist¹

¹Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.

Journal of the American Statistical Association

|August 1, 2014

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

This study introduces functional data analysis (FDA) for mediation analysis, extending structural equation models (SEMs) to analyze continuous functional mediators. This approach offers novel insights into the timing of causal effects in complex data like fMRI.

Keywords:

Brain connectivity Causal inference Functional data analysis Instrumental variable Mediation Structural equation models fMRI

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Area of Science:

Behavioral Sciences
Statistics
Neuroscience

Background:

Mediation analysis in behavioral sciences typically uses structural equation models (SEMs) to assess scalar intermediate variables.
Causal effects are inferred from model coefficients, limiting analysis to single measures.

Purpose of the Study:

To extend SEMs to functional data analysis (FDA) for mediation analysis.
To enable the investigation of continuous functional mediators on outcomes.
To apply this novel framework to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data.

Main Methods:

Developed an extension of SEMs for functional data.
Established conditions for identifying average causal effects of functional mediators.
Applied the method to fMRI data from a thermal pain study.

Main Results:

The functional mediation approach successfully analyzed fMRI data.
Identified the timing of mediating effects in brain activation.
Demonstrated the ability to study functional effects of mediators.

Conclusions:

This work presents the first causal inference application within the FDA framework.
The extended SEM approach provides richer insights into mediation with functional data.
Offers a new tool for analyzing complex neuroimaging and other functional data.