Longitudinal Whole-Brain Functional Network Change Patterns Over A Two-Year Period In The ABCD Data

Functional network connectivity (FNC) is a useful measure for evaluating the temporal dependency among brain networks. Longitudinal changes of intrinsic function are of great interest, but to date there has been little focus on multivariate patterns of FNC changes with development. In this paper, we proposed a novel approach that uses FNC matrices to estimate multiple overlapping brain functional change patterns (FCPs). We applied this approach to the large-scale Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) data. Results reveal several highly structured FCPs showing a significant change over a two-year period including brain functional connectivity between visual (VS) and sensorimotor (SM) domains. This pattern of FNC expression becomes stronger with age. We also found a differential pattern of changes between male and female individuals. Our approach provides a powerful way to evaluate whole brain functional changes in longitudinal data.