Study Timeline

Welcome to the Brain Connectivity Study! Our research team is excited to work with you and your family during your time in the study. Please see below for some different areas of participation that you can anticipate for this type of study.

After you have completed our screening intake questions with our study coordinator to determine your child is eligible for participation, the next step is for the legal guardian to set up a time to review the study consent with our coordinator. In this call, you could anticipate around 35-40 minutes. Our study coordinator will review all the ins and outs about the study so you can make a fully informed decision to join the study project. After the study consent has been signed, your child will be enrolled into the study and ready to be scheduled for study visits!

Typically, scheduling the first study visit will involve the cognitive assessment "brain games" portion of the study first to help orient the participant to the research study. We can sometimes accommodate visit scheduling out of order (please ask the coordinator for more information around this). 

When your child is officially enrolled, a secure link will be sent to your email through a program called "REDCap" (this is not spam). REDCap is a secure platform housed through Children's Healthcare of Atlanta to collect data in the study. Our study team kindly asks families to please complete the electronic parent surveys as soon as you can (preferably before the first study visit), as this helps us to learn more about the participant before they arrive and helps for reporting numbers to our study funders (National Institutes of Health - NIH). 

Please select the tab above to be guided on what to expect for this study visit. Families could anticipate around 1.5-3.5 hours for this visit, as some children may require several break periods. You are welcome to bring snacks and drinks with you to the visit. Please note: If your child has completed the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V) within a year of their scheduled appointment, they may not have to repeat that assessment again. If they have, our study team will need the official scores from the assessment. If they completed the assessment more than a year, they would need to retake the assessment for the study. If a child in the ASD group has previously completed the WISC-V less than a year, our team will still need to complete an Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) assessment for confirming diagnosis. 

Please see tab "Visit #2 - Mock Training" on more details you can expect for this visit. Please note: The number of training visits will depend on the child, and we cannot anticipate how many trainings may be involved until we work with them at the study visit. Families should anticipate up to five training visits, depending on how the visits go. Each mock training visit can be around 45 minutes to one hour.

Please see tab "Visit #3 - MRI" on more details you can expect for this study visit. Families can anticipate around 1.5 to 2 hours for the scan visit (with breaks included). You are welcome to bring preferred snacks they can have during the break periods. Please plan for MRI safe clothing (see MRI Safety tab), remove any jewelry, or hair accessories that contain metal. No metal will be allowed inside the scanning room at any time.