title: Identifying endophenotypes of autism: a multivariate approach.
abstract: The existence of an endophenotype of autism spectrum condition (ASC) has been recently suggested by several commentators. It can be estimated by finding differences between controls and people with ASC that are also present when comparing controls and the unaffected siblings of ASC individuals. In this work, we used a multivariate methodology applied on magnetic resonance images to look for such differences. The proposed procedure consists of combining a searchlight approach and a support vector machine classifier to identify the differences between three groups of participants in pairwise comparisons: controls, people with ASC and their unaffected siblings. Then we compared those differences selecting spatially collocated as candidate endophenotypes of ASC.
authors.affiliation: Cyclotron Research Centre, University of Liège Liège, Belgium ; Department of Psychiatry, Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Fermín
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Segovia
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Rosemary
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Holt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Spencer
authors.affiliation: Department of Signal Theory, Networking and Communications, University of Granada Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: Juan M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Górriz
authors.affiliation: Department of Signal Theory, Networking and Communications, University of Granada Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ramírez
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Architecture and Technology, University of Granada Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: Carlos G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Puntonet
authors.affiliation: Cyclotron Research Centre, University of Liège Liège, Belgium.
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Phillips
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Lindsay
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chura
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Baron-Cohen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Suckling
keywords: MRI; autism spectrum condition; endophenotype; searchlight; support vector machine