Summary
Adolescence is a complex time of heightened self-consciousness, risk taking and peer orientation which may be especially challenging for teens diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of children with ASD that begin at diagnosis and extend into adolescence are extremely rare. This is a critical gap since adolescence is also a period of profound brain changes. The MIND Institute Autism Phenome Project (APP) was initiated in 2006 to discover multilevel phenotypic information enabling definition of clinically meaningful subtypes of ASD.
