Dear Andrew,

Thanks in advance for your help!

I am wondering whether I can use this approach to understand the relationship between disrupted functional and structural connections across time in children with ADHD compared to controls? For instance, can I use structure-function coupling matrices of each time point (three time-points) and use NBS to understand the disrupted structure-function connection that develop together in children with ADHD compared to controls? Or is there any other way to understand this? 

Could you please give any idea in regard to this?

Kind regards,
Shania

Hi Shania, 

Typically, structure-function coupling in the connectome will yield a single measure of coupling (e.g. correlation coefficient) for each individual. 

it may interesting to test for any potential changes in coupling changes across the three time points (e.g. t1 > t2 > t3), and whether this change is faster/slower in the ADHD group. 

The NBS is not really needed to test this hypothesis, since the test is based on only one measurement (coupling) per time point per individual. You could use a standard 2 x 3 ANOVA on the coupling values (2 groups, 3 time points). 

You might want to check out some of the recent work on structure-function coupling. Highly recommend: 

• https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(20)30026-7
• https://www.pnas.org/content/116/42/21219

Best wishes, 
Andrew
Originally posted by Shania Soman: