Collaborative Research: NCS-FO: Dynamic Brain Graph Mining

Mapping the connections in human brains as networked systems, i.e., brain graphs, has become a pervasive paradigm in neuroscience. In cognitive development, aging, and disease, it is crucial to understand how the structures and functions of the brain change over time to provide insights into individual differences and the mechanisms underlying different behaviors and disorders. Traditional models, however, mostly treat the brain graphs as “static,” ignoring the underlying changes over time. This project aims to develop new methods for modeling the dynamics of brain graphs that are robust in generating accurate, interpretable, and fair predictions. This interdisciplinary project will provide a unique mix of training for the participating researchers, and the research findings will be incorporated into education. The investigators will disseminate their findings through an established benchmark platform, new publications, tutorials, and collaborations with domain experts. This project seeks to overcome the barriers of existing static brain graph models and develop practical foundations and computational tools for processing and analyzing complex brain graphs derived from dynamic neuroimaging data. The project will develop a unified framework of Brain Graph Ordinary Differential Equations (BrainGDE) interweaving advanced deep graph learning techniques and ordinary differential equations, addressing the challenges of data complexity, model interpretability, fairness and trustworthiness, as well as clinical transformation. Planned research tasks will focus on: (1) unimodal dynamic brain graph mining, (2) multimodal dynamic brain graph mining, and (3) clinical investigations, in collaboration with domain experts. If successful, this research will reshape deep learning approaches for temporal data mining in bioinformatics and healthcare technologies. The dynamic graph mining framework established in this project will also guide research on the problems of sensing, knowledge discovery, reasoning, and inference on high-dimensional dynamic data with structures and will serve as a universal benchmark for future work in this direction. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.