Excellent and helpful response, Stephen.

I've been considering going the non-parametric route to just avoid these issues in the first place, but part of my trepidation has been a lack understanding what CONN is doing "under the hood" with respect to the permutation approach.  Do you know how this is handled in CONN?  Or, maybe can point towards some papers where they used CONN permutation and delve into the technique in the paper methods?

Thanks,
Jeff Browndyke