Interpretable, highly accurate brain decoding of subtly distinct brain states from functional MRI using intrinsic functional networks and long short-term memory recurrent neural networks

Decoding brain functional states underlying cognitive processes from functional MRI (fMRI) data using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) techniques has achieved promising performance for characterizing brain activation patterns and providing neurofeedback signals. However, it remains challenging to decode subtly distinct brain states for individual fMRI data points due to varying temporal durations and dependency among different cognitive processes. In this study, we develop a deep learning based framework for brain decoding by leveraging recent advances in intrinsic functional network modeling and sequence modeling using long short-term memory (LSTM) recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Particularly, subject-specific intrinsic functional networks (FNs) are computed from resting-state fMRI data and are used to characterize functional signals of task fMRI data with a compact representation for building brain decoding models, and LSTM RNNs are adopted to learn brain decoding mappings between functional profiles and brain states. Validation results on fMRI data from the HCP dataset have demonstrated that brain decoding models built on training data using the proposed method could learn discriminative latent feature representations and effectively distinguish subtly distinct working memory tasks of different subjects with significantly higher accuracy than conventional decoding models. Informative FNs of the brain decoding models identified as brain activation patterns of working memory tasks were largely consistent with the literature. The method also obtained promising decoding performance on motor and social cognition tasks. Our results suggest that LSTM RNNs in conjunction with FNs could build interpretable, highly accurate brain decoding models.