Functional Factor Analysis of Brain Connectivity

In this presentation we explore the development and application of factor analysis with functional data.  Functional data analysis, which involves data repeatedly measured over some domain (such as space or time), often makes use of dimension reduction techniques such as principal component analysis, but factor analysis has thus far been relatively under explored in this area.  Motivated by applications to fMRI which require interpretable dimension reduction tools, we build a factor analysis model suitable for such data which provides interpretable components that scientists can make use of in their downstream analyses.