Multiframe Evolving Dynamic Functional Network Connectivity Motifs (Evodfncs) from Continuity-Preserving Planar Embedding

The study of brain network connectivity as a time-varying property began relatively recently and to date has remained primarily concerned with capturing a handful of discrete static states that characterize connectivity as measured on a timescale shorter than that of the full scan. Capturing group- level representations of temporally evolving patterns of connectivity is a challenging and important next step in fully leveraging the information available in large resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) studies. We introduce a flexible, extensible data-driven framework for the identification of group-level multiframe (movie-style) dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) states. Our approach employs uniform manifold approximation and embedding (UMAP) to produce a planar embedding of the high-dimensional whole-brain connectivity dynamics that preserves important features, such as trajectory continuity, characterizing dynamics in the native high dimensional state space. The method is validated in application to a large rs- fMRI study of schizophrenia where it extracts naturalistic fluidly-varying connectivity motifs that differ between schizophrenia patients (SZs) and healthy controls (HC).Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Functional Network Connectivity, Dynamic Functional Network Connectivity, Schizophrenia