The
International Neuroimaging Data-Sharing Initiative (INDI), in
coordination with the Child Mind Institute, announces the public release
of the "Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) Sample" via the 1000
Functional Connectomes Project (http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/abide/index.html).
Drs.
Adriana Di Martino (NYU Child Study Center; consortium coordinator) and
Stewart Mostofsky (Kennedy Krieger Institute) have assembled ABIDE as
an international consortium explicitly dedicated to the sharing of
previously collected resting state functional magnetic
resonance imaging (R-fMRI) and morphometric data for autism. To date,
the effort has brought together 20 samples from 16 contributing sites,
yielding an aggregate dataset of 539 individuals with autism and 573
typical controls. The effort builds upon the model
of the highly successful ADHD-200 Consortium (http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/adhd200/), though providing an extensive array
of phenotypic characterizations common to nearly all sites, that far exceeds it predecessor. Key diagnostic and assessment schedules (e.g., ADOS, ADIS), psychometric testing (e.g., IQ) and a variety
of additional questionnaires, commonly employed in the autism community, are being shared along with brain imaging data.
