Topological Cycle Graph Attention Network for Brain Functional Connectivity

This study, we introduce a novel Topological Cycle Graph Attention Network (CycGAT), designed to delineate a functional backbone within brain functional graphs—key pathways essential for signal transmission—from non-essential, redundant connections that form cycles around this core structure. We first introduce a cycle incidence matrix that establishes an independent cycle basis within a graph, mapping its relationship with edges. We propose a cycle graph convolution that leverages a cycle adjacency matrix, derived from the cycle incidence matrix, to specifically filter edge signals in a domain of cycles. Additionally, we strengthen the representation power of the cycle graph convolution by adding an attention mechanism, which is further augmented by the introduction of edge positional encodings in cycles, to enhance the topological awareness of CycGAT. We demonstrate CycGAT’s localization through simulation and its efficacy on an ABCD study’s fMRI data (n = 8765), comparing it with baseline models. CycGAT outperforms these models, identifying a functional backbone with significantly fewer cycles, crucial for understanding neural circuits related to general intelligence. Our code is available at https://github.com/JH-415/CycGAT .