# Topology-Aware Graph Augmentation for Predicting Clinical Trajectories in Neurocognitive Disorders

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00888 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00888/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 14 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Exploring Simple Siamese Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10566/) (2020)
- [Graph Contrastive Learning with Augmentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13902/) (2020)
- [Contrastive Multi-View Representation Learning on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05582/) (2020)
- [Interpretable Graph Neural Networks for Connectome-Based Brain Disorder Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.00813/) (2022)
- [Exploring Image Augmentations for Siamese Representation Learning with Chest X-Rays](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12636/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Brain networks/graphs derived from resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) help study underlying pathophysiology of neurocognitive disorders by measuring neuronal activities in the brain. Some studies utilize learning-based methods for brain network analysis, but typically suffer from low model generalizability caused by scarce labeled fMRI data. As a notable self-supervised strategy, graph contrastive learning helps leverage auxiliary unlabeled data. But existing methods generally arbitrarily perturb graph nodes/edges to generate augmented graphs, without considering essential topology information of brain networks. To this end, we propose a topology-aware graph augmentation (TGA) framework, comprising a pretext model to train a generalizable encoder on large-scale unlabeled fMRI cohorts and a task-specific model to perform downstream tasks on a small target dataset. In the pretext model, we design two novel topology-aware graph augmentation strategies: (1) hub-preserving node dropping that prioritizes preserving brain hub regions according to node importance, and (2) weight-dependent edge removing that focuses on keeping important functional connectivities based on edge weights. Experiments on 1, 688 fMRI scans suggest that TGA outperforms several state-of-the-art methods.