Machine learning of neural representations of suicide and emotion concepts identifies suicidal youth

The clinical assessment of suicidal risk would be significantly complemented by a biologically-based measure that assesses alterations in the neural representations of concepts related to death and life in people who engage in suicidal ideation. This study used machine-learning algorithms (Gaussian Naïve Bayes) to identify such individuals (17 suicidal ideators vs 17 controls) with high (91%) accuracy, based on their altered fMRI neural signatures of death and life-related concepts. The most discriminating concepts were death, cruelty, trouble, carefree, good, and praise. A similar classification accurately (94%) discriminated 9 suicidal ideators who had made a suicide attempt from 8 who had not. Moreover, a major facet of the concept alterations was the evoked emotion, whose neural signature served as an alternative basis for accurate (85%) group classification. The study establishes a biological, neurocognitive basis for altered concept representations in participants with suicidal ideation, which enables highly accurate group membership classification.