Thanks for the quick response as usual.

Unfortunately the the coding looks correct.. first column intercept term, second patients (1) and controls (0), followed by one column for sex and the last accounting for age. ie..

1 1 1 31
1 1 1 24
1 1 0 50
1 1 1 30
1 0 1 24
1 0 1 24
1 0 1 25
1 0 1 34

If i followed you correctly the contras [0 1 0 0] shows higher connectivity in patients than controls.
I used the function (combine.m, kindly provided by you) to combine all subjects in a 4D matrix that were alphabetically ordered.. will recheck visually.

Is it possible to have some connection pairs showing higher connectivity values and at the same time others connections within the same component with lower values? or NBS should show separate components in that case?

Thanks again for your support!