Bayesian reduced rank regression reveals generalisable neural
fingerprints that differentiate between individuals in
magnetoencephalography data
Abstract
Recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies have reported that
functional connectivity (FC) and power spectra can be used as neural
fingerprints in differentiating individuals. Such studies have mainly
used correlations between measurement sessions to distinguish
individuals from each other. However, it has remained unclear whether
such correlations might reflect a more generalisable principle of
individually distinctive brain patterns. Here, we evaluated a
machine-learning based approach, termed latent-noise Bayesian reduced
rank regression (BRRR) as a means of modelling individual differences in
the resting-state MEG data of the Human Connectome Project (HCP), using
FC and power spectra as neural features. First, we verified that BRRR
could model and reproduce the differences between metrics that
correlation-based fingerprinting yields. We trained BRRR models to
distinguish individuals based on data from one measurements and used the
models to identify subsequent measurement sessions of those same
individuals. The best performing BRRR models, using only 20
spatiospectral components, were able to identify subjects across
measurement sessions with over 90% accuracy, approaching the highest
correlation-based accuracies. Using cross-validation, we then determined
whether that BRRR could generalize to unseen subjects, successfully
classifying the measurement sessions of novel individuals with over 80%
accuracy. The results demonstrate that individual neurofunctional
differences can be reliably extracted from MEG data with a
low-dimensional predictive model.