An interpretable TimeMIL framework for fNIRS: differential diagnosis between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

BackgroundSchizophrenia (SCZ) and bipolar disorder (BD) exhibit substantial overlap in clinical symptoms, making differential diagnosis a persistent challenge and leading to a high risk of misdiagnosis. Recently, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during the verbal fluency task (VFT) has provided more objective neurofunctional markers for distinguishing between the two disorders than traditional behavioral scales. However, most existing studies have predominantly relied on conventiona