Identification of psychiatric disorder subtypes from functional connectivity patterns in resting-state electroencephalography

The understanding and treatment of psychiatric disorders with neurobiological and clinical heterogeneity could benefit from the identification of disease subtypes on the basis of data acquired with established neuroimaging technologies. Here, we report the identification of two clinically relevant subtypes of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) on the basis of robust and distinct functional-connectivity patterns, prominently within the frontoparietal-control and default-mode networks. We identified the disease subtypes by analysing, via unsupervised and supervised machine learning, the power-envelope-based connectivity of signals reconstructed from high-density resting-state electroencephalography in four datasets from patients with PTSD and MDD, and show that the subtypes are transferable across independent datasets recorded under different conditions. The subtype whose functional connectivity differed most from those of healthy controls was less responsive to psychotherapy treatment for PTSD and failed to respond to an antidepressant medication for MDD. By contrast, both subtypes responded equally well to two different forms of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy for MDD. Our data-driven approach may constitute a generalizable solution for connectome-based diagnosis.
One-sentence editorial summary The analysis of functional-connectivity patterns in resting-state electroencephalography data via machine learning led to the identification of two clinically relevant subtypes of post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder.