# Functional connectomics associated with ASD

> **NIH NIH P50** · YALE UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $376,586

## Abstract

Abstract
This project will image 150 children (~ aged 12) with and without autism spectrum disorder to reveal the
changes in functional brain organization that relate to autism severity and associated behavioral measures.
The children will represent 3 distinct groups of 50 kids each (high risk children with autism, high risk siblings
without autism and low risk healthy controls) and we will contrast these groups to understand the major
functional network changes associated with autism. We will also develop connectome based predictive
models to relate individual functional connectivity profiles to autism scores (using ADOS-2 social affect as
the primary measure and RRB as a secondary measure) and examine the extent to which the models
localize to specific networks including the executive control, the salience, and the default mode networks.
The connectivity input data will be of unprecedented quality and extent (at least 20minutes of resting-state
data providing highly reliable single subject data). In addition to the resting-state, we will include data
collected during continuous performance tasks (an attention task: gradCPT and a selective social attention
task previously characterized with eye-tracking data). Sex differences will be of specific interest in
understanding network changes with autism severity. We will also identify the altered networks associated
with ASD and provide these networks for exploratory analysis in project 1 (infants) and project 4 (fetal
brains) to examine the extent to which these networks are altered early in development. The neural
characterization performed in project 3 will be on a subset of the subjects studied in this project and thus we
will have direct neural characteristics to relate to the connectivity changes we will quantify. This will be one
of the first times neuronal structural features have been related to macroscopic connectivity data.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10240560
- **Project number:** 5P50MH115716-05
- **Recipient organization:** YALE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** R Todd Constable
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $376,586
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-07 → 2023-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10240560

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10240560, Functional connectomics associated with ASD (5P50MH115716-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10240560. Licensed CC0.

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