Conditioned Graph Reconstruction of Brain Functional Network Connectivity Reveals Interpretable Latent Axes of Sex...

In studying the brain's functional connectivity and its associations with clinically observed assessments, novel learning frameworks modeling its network properties in conjunction with assessment variables are crucial to uncover variable-specific patterns via meaningful encoding and reconstruction. We present a generative framework for modeling human brain functional connectivity features while retaining key network metrics and differences associated with demographic and cognitive variables. A conditional graph variational autoencoder is employed to encode static functional network connectivity (sFNC) features into a latent representation, which is then utilized for the dual purpose of reconstructing sFNC data conditioned on variables such as biological sex or fluid intelligence, and identifying discriminative connectivity features associated with the conditioning variables in the latent space. Using over 20,000 subjects from the UK Biobank, our model demonstrates high-fidelity reconstructions that preserve condition-specific network patterns, while the latent space captures interpretable patterns associated with these variables. The group differences in latent space are highlighted by one-hot probing of the latent dimensions and forward mapping to connectivity patterns. This approach provides a scalable, network-informed framework for studying brain functional connectivity and its associations with individual differences, offering potential applications in characterizing functional signatures for mental health conditions via clinically observed assessment variables.