Structural and Functional Connectivity in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been given a high priority for genetic and neurobiological study. There is no such information in Asian population and no study has conducted using Diffusion Spectrum Imaging (DSI) to investigate the connectivity throughout the world. Moreover, no follow-up study has been done to examine the developmental changes of structural and functional connectivity. We anticipate to establishing a cohort of 50 ASD and their siblings with complete clinical, neuropsychological, brain imaging, and genetic data for longitudinal study on ASD. Our findings will contribute to our understanding of the structural and functional dysconnectivity for ASD and whether dysconnectivity can be an endophenotype for ASD and used as a biomarker for early diagnosis of ASD.