Shira Yoffe | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

SpARCD: A Spectral Graph Framework for Revealing Differential Functional Connectivity in fMRI Data

Identifying brain regions that exhibit altered functional connectivity between cognitive or emotional states is a fundamental problem in neuroscience. We propose SpARCD (Spectral Analysis for Revealing Connectivity Differences), a statistical framework for detecting detecting condition-specific patterns of functional connectivity. SpARCD uses distance correlation, a dependence measure sensitive to both linear and nonlinear associations, to construct weighted region-wise connectivity graphs for each condition. A differential operator obtained through spectral filtering is then used to identify connectivity changes via its leading eigenvectors. To assess statistical significance, we develop a permutation-based testing procedure that yields interpretable region-level significance maps. We establish finite-sample validity of the permutation test and derive asymptotic guarantees for the stability of the resulting region rankings. Simulation studies demonstrate improved power relative to conventional edge-wise and univariate approaches, particularly in settings with nonlinear dependence structures. We applied SpARCD to fMRI data from 113 individuals with early-stage PTSD and 42 controls during emotional and neutral task conditions. The method identified distinct connectivity networks associated with visual processing in both PTSD and control participants. Resting-state comparisons between PTSD and control participants highlighted similar visual networks. SpARCD provides a statistically rigorous and computationally efficient framework for comparing high-dimensional connectivity patterns.

stat.ME↗

arXiv2024

Spectral Graph Filtering for Modality-Specific Representation Learning

Multimodal datasets, where measurements are obtained from multiple sensors, have become central to many scientific domains. In unsupervised settings, most representation learning methods focus on identifying shared latent structures, such as clusters or continuous processes that appear across modalities. However, some aspects of the data may be observed only through a single modality. For example, in computational biology, certain cell-subtypes may appear in genetic profiles but not in epigenetic markers. In this paper, we present DELVE, a spectral method for extracting modality-specific (differential) latent variables. Our approach constructs a graph for each modality and leverages differences in their connectivity patterns to design a graph filter that attenuates shared signals while preserving modality-specific components. We provide an asymptotic convergence analysis for our method under a product manifold model. To evaluate the performance of our method, we test its ability to recover differential latent structures in several synthetic and real datasets.

stat.ME↗