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Polygenic Risk-Informed White Matter Integrity Improves Deep Learning-Based Prediction of Youth Depression

Cha, J.; Min, J. J.; Wang, H.; Lee, E.; Kim, B.-G.; Kim, G.; Choi, S. Y.; Choi, K.; Hong, S. H.; Jang, Y.; Rah, Y. J.; Kim, J. Y.; Han, S.; Lee, K. H.; Kim, J.; van Dijk, M. T.; Kim, J.-W.; Chung, G. H.; Chung, D.; Lee, S. A.; Joo, Y. Y.

2025-03-27 psychiatry and clinical psychology
10.1101/2025.03.27.25324746 medRxiv
Show abstract

Early detection of youth depression is crucial, given its rising prevalence and long-term consequences. Although genetic factors contribute significantly to youth depression, their integration with neuroimaging remains limited. We present a deep learning framework using polygenic scores (PGS) to pretrain a 3D convolutional neural network on diffusion MRI (track-weighted fractional anisotropy), capturing gene-brain associations from a multi-ethnic cohort in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (N=4,741). Fine-tuned for predicting depression, the model improved cross-sectional (N=266; AUC=0.62) and two-year predictions of depression and suicidality (AUC=0.61-0.66). It outperformed unimodal models, increasing accuracy by up to 24% over PGS-only and 5.8% over brain-only models. Explainable artificial intelligence identified key white matter tracts--superior longitudinal fasciculus, cingulum and corpus callosum--as predictive features. Decision curve analysis showed greater clinical utility. The model generalized to an independent Korean youth sample (N=108; AUC=0.67), supporting the cross-ethnic scalability of PGS-informed diffusion MRI for precision psychiatry

Published in Communications Medicine (predicted rank #30) · training set

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