Brain connectivity markers for the diagnosis of non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents: a DTI and resting-state fMRI study

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), defined as the deliberate damage or destruction of body tissue without the intent to die, is a common behavior amongst adolescents. We conducted connectome-based analysis to investigate neural correlates of self-injury and identified several potential brain connectivity markers of NSSI diagnosis. On basis of these markers, the random forest model achieved an accuracy of 78.2% to discriminate between NSSI and non-NSSI patients. Our study indicated that structural and functional connectivity could characterize the behavior of self-injury and help early NSSI diagnosis in adolescents.