# Information Bottleneck-Guided Heterogeneous Graph Learning for Interpretable Neurodevelopmental Disorder Diagnosis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.20769 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20769/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 21 of its 75 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Simplifying Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07153/) (2019)
- [Hierarchical Graph Representation Learning with Differentiable Pooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08804/) (2018)
- [Heterogeneous Graph Attention Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07293/) (2019)
- [On the Bottleneck of Graph Neural Networks and its Practical Implications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05205/) (2020)
- [Disease Prediction using Graph Convolutional Networks: Application to Autism Spectrum Disorder and Alzheimer's Disease](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01738/) (2018)
- [Graph Neural Networks in Network Neuroscience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03535/) (2021)
- [Spectral Graph Convolutions for Population-based Disease Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03020/) (2017)
- [InceptionGCN: Receptive Field Aware Graph Convolutional Network for Disease Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.04233/) (2019)
- [Recognizing Predictive Substructures with Subgraph Information Bottleneck](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11155/) (2021)
- [HEALNet: Multimodal Fusion for Heterogeneous Biomedical Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09115/) (2023)
- [GATE: Graph CCA for Temporal SElf-supervised Learning for Label-efficient fMRI Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09034/) (2022)
- [BrainIB: Interpretable Brain Network-based Psychiatric Diagnosis with Graph Information Bottleneck](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.03612/) (2022)
- [Prioritized Information Bottleneck Theoretic Framework with Distributed Online Learning for Edge Video Analytics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00146/) (2024)
- [MM-GTUNets: Unified Multi-Modal Graph Deep Learning for Brain Disorders Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14455/) (2024)
- [Contrastive Graph Pooling for Explainable Classification of Brain Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11133/) (2023)
- [STANet: A Novel Spatio-Temporal Aggregation Network for Depression Classification with Small and Unbalanced FMRI Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21323/) (2024)
- [MHNet: Multi-view High-order Network for Diagnosing Neurodevelopmental Disorders Using Resting-state fMRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03217/) (2024)
- [Neural Modulation Alteration to Positive and Negative Emotions in Depressed Patients: Insights from fMRI Using Positive/Negative Emotion Atlas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18492/) (2024)
- [STARFormer: A Novel Spatio-Temporal Aggregation Reorganization Transformer of FMRI for Brain Disorder Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00378/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [LEL: Lipschitz Continuity Constrained Ensemble Learning for Efficient EEG-Based Intra-subject Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09156/) (2025)
- [Multimodal Attention-Aware Fusion for Diagnosing Distal Myopathy: Evaluating Model Interpretability and Clinician Trust](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01316/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Developing interpretable models for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) diagnosis presents significant challenges in effectively encoding, decoding, and integrating multimodal neuroimaging data. While many existing machine learning approaches have shown promise in brain network analysis, they typically suffer from limited interpretability, particularly in extracting meaningful biomarkers from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data and establishing clear relationships between imaging features and demographic characteristics. Besides, current graph neural network methodologies face limitations in capturing both local and global functional connectivity patterns while simultaneously achieving theoretically principled multimodal data fusion. To address these challenges, we propose the Interpretable Information Bottleneck Heterogeneous Graph Neural Network (I2B-HGNN), a unified framework that applies information bottleneck principles to guide both brain connectivity modeling and cross-modal feature integration. This framework comprises two complementary components. The first is the Information Bottleneck Graph Transformer (IBGraphFormer), which combines transformer-based global attention mechanisms with graph neural networks through information bottleneck-guided pooling to identify sufficient biomarkers. The second is the Information Bottleneck Heterogeneous Graph Attention Network (IB-HGAN), which employs meta-path-based heterogeneous graph learning with structural consistency constraints to achieve interpretable fusion of neuroimaging and demographic data. The experimental results demonstrate that I2B-HGNN achieves superior performance in diagnosing NDDs, exhibiting both high classification accuracy and the ability to provide interpretable biomarker identification while effectively analyzing non-imaging data.