Temporal Generative Models for Learning Heterogeneous Group Dynamics of Ecological Momentary Data

Abstract

SummaryOne of the goals of precision psychiatry is to characterize mental disorders in an individualized manner, taking into account the underlying dynamic processes. Recent advances in mobile technologies have enabled the collection of Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMAs) that capture multiple responses in real-time at high frequency. However, EMA data is often multi-dimensional, correlated, and hierarchical. Mixed-effects models are commonly used but may require restrictive assumptions about the fixed and random effects and the correlation structure. The Recurrent Temporal Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RTRBM) is a generative neural network that can be used to model temporal data, but most existing RTRBM approaches do not account for the potential heterogeneity of group dynamics within a population based on available covariates. In this paper, we propose a new temporal generative model, the Heterogeneous-Dynamics Restricted Boltzmann Machine (HDRBM), to learn the heterogeneous group dynamics and demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach on simulated and real-world EMA data sets. We show that by incorporating covariates, HDRBM can improve accuracy and interpretability, explore the underlying drivers of the group dynamics of participants, and serve as a generative model for EMA studies.