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1. Altered topological structure of the brain white matter in maltreated children through topological data analysis

   https://doi.org/10.1162/netn_a_00355  

   Chung, Moo K.; Azizi, Tahmineh; Hanson, Jamie L.; Alexander, Andrew L.; Pollak, Seth D.; Davidson, Richard J. (April 2024, Network Neuroscience)

   Abstract Childhood maltreatment may adversely affect brain development and consequently influence behavioral, emotional, and psychological patterns during adulthood. In this study, we propose an analytical pipeline for modeling the altered topological structure of brain white matter in maltreated and typically developing children. We perform topological data analysis (TDA) to assess the alteration in the global topology of the brain white matter structural covariance network among children. We use persistent homology, an algebraic technique in TDA, to analyze topological features in the brain covariance networks constructed from structural magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging. We develop a novel framework for statistical inference based on the Wasserstein distance to assess the significance of the observed topological differences. Using these methods in comparing maltreated children with a typically developing control group, we find that maltreatment may increase homogeneity in white matter structures and thus induce higher correlations in the structural covariance; this is reflected in the topological profile. Our findings strongly suggest that TDA can be a valuable framework to model altered topological structures of the brain. The MATLAB codes and processed data used in this study can be found at https://github.com/laplcebeltrami/maltreated. 

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2. Topological Data Analysis for Multivariate Time Series Data

   https://doi.org/10.3390/e25111509  

   El-Yaagoubi, Anass B.; Chung, Moo K.; Ombao, Hernando (November 2023, Entropy)

   Over the last two decades, topological data analysis (TDA) has emerged as a very powerful data analytic approach that can deal with various data modalities of varying complexities. One of the most commonly used tools in TDA is persistent homology (PH), which can extract topological properties from data at various scales. The aim of this article is to introduce TDA concepts to a statistical audience and provide an approach to analyzing multivariate time series data. The application’s focus will be on multivariate brain signals and brain connectivity networks. Finally, this paper concludes with an overview of some open problems and potential application of TDA to modeling directionality in a brain network, as well as the casting of TDA in the context of mixed effect models to capture variations in the topological properties of data collected from multiple subjects. 

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3. Topological clustering of multilayer networks

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2019994118  

   Yuvaraj, Monisha; Dey, Asim K.; Lyubchich, Vyacheslav; Gel, Yulia R.; Poor, H. Vincent (May 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Multilayer networks continue to gain significant attention in many areas of study, particularly due to their high utility in modeling interdependent systems such as critical infrastructures, human brain connectome, and socioenvironmental ecosystems. However, clustering of multilayer networks, especially using the information on higher-order interactions of the system entities, still remains in its infancy. In turn, higher-order connectivity is often the key in such multilayer network applications as developing optimal partitioning of critical infrastructures in order to isolate unhealthy system components under cyber-physical threats and simultaneous identification of multiple brain regions affected by trauma or mental illness. In this paper, we introduce the concepts of topological data analysis to studies of complex multilayer networks and propose a topological approach for network clustering. The key rationale is to group nodes based not on pairwise connectivity patterns or relationships between observations recorded at two individual nodes but based on how similar in shape their local neighborhoods are at various resolution scales. Since shapes of local node neighborhoods are quantified using a topological summary in terms of persistence diagrams, we refer to the approach as clustering using persistence diagrams (CPD). CPD systematically accounts for the important heterogeneous higher-order properties of node interactions within and in-between network layers and integrates information from the node neighbors. We illustrate the utility of CPD by applying it to an emerging problem of societal importance: vulnerability zoning of residential properties to weather- and climate-induced risks in the context of house insurance claim dynamics. 

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4. Topological state-space estimation of functional human brain networks

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011869  

   Chung, Moo K; Huang, Shih-Gu; Carroll, Ian C; Calhoun, Vince D; Goldsmith, H Hill (May 2024, PLOS Computational Biology)

   Wang, Yalin (Ed.)

   We introduce an innovative, data-driven topological data analysis (TDA) technique for estimating the state spaces of dynamically changing functional human brain networks at rest. Our method utilizes the Wasserstein distance to measure topological differences, enabling the clustering of brain networks into distinct topological states. This technique outperforms the commonly used k-means clustering in identifying brain network state spaces by effectively incorporating the temporal dynamics of the data without the need for explicit model specification. We further investigate the genetic underpinnings of these topological features using a twin study design, examining the heritability of such state changes. Our findings suggest that the topology of brain networks, particularly in their dynamic state changes, may hold significant hidden genetic information. 

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5. Hidden network generating rules from partially observed complex networks

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-021-00701-5  

   Yang, Ruochen; Sala, Frederic; Bogdan, Paul (December 2021, Communications Physics)

   Abstract Complex biological, neuroscience, geoscience and social networks exhibit heterogeneous self-similar higher order topological structures that are usually characterized as being multifractal in nature. However, describing their topological complexity through a compact mathematical description and deciphering their topological governing rules has remained elusive and prevented a comprehensive understanding of networks. To overcome this challenge, we propose a weighted multifractal graph model capable of capturing the underlying generating rules of complex systems and characterizing their node heterogeneity and pairwise interactions. To infer the generating measure with hidden information, we introduce a variational expectation maximization framework. We demonstrate the robustness of the network generator reconstruction as a function of model properties, especially in noisy and partially observed scenarios. The proposed network generator inference framework is able to reproduce network properties, differentiate varying structures in brain networks and chromosomal interactions, and detect topologically associating domain regions in conformation maps of the human genome. 

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