Fig. 3 |. Hierarchical clustering on brain–behavior dimension scores reveals four autism spectrum disorder subgroups.
a, Heat map and dendrogram depict hierarchical clustering on all 299 ASD individuals (rows) along three dimensions (columns) using cosine similarity (dendrogram) between connectivity scores of ASD participant pairs (heat map; dashed line indicates 80% of maximum cosine distance). b–e, Box plots of the distribution of clinical symptom z-scores (superimposed bar graphs depict the median) for social affect (SA) (b), RRB (c), verbal IQ (VIQ) (d) and total severity (e; N = 69, N = 87, N = 67 and N = 76 ASD participants for subgroups 1–4, respectively; color indicates subgroup). All four measures–social affect, RRB, verbal IQ and total severity–differed by subgroup (Kruskal–Wallis test between subgroups showed significant between-subgroup differences for each symptom: social affect, X2 (3, N = 299) = 115.86, P = 6.02 × 10−25; RRB: X2 (3, N = 299) = 124.52, P = 8.18 × 10−27; VIQ: X2 (3, N = 299) = 138.28, P = 8.88 × 10−30; total severity: X2 (3, N = 299) = 115.22, P = 8.25 × 10−25). Note that higher social affect, RRB and total severity scores and lower verbal IQ indicate greater impairment. f–h, Kernel density estimation plots of participant connectivity scores in two dimensions (lowest iso-proportion level = 0.25). Box plots indicate distributions of subgroup connectivity scores along a single dimension (N = 69, N = 87, N = 67 and N = 76 ASD participants for subgroups 1–4, respectively). For b–h, box bounds indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles; the center line denotes the median; whiskers correspond to ±2.7σ and 99.3% of the data; and outliers are shown as circles. Analyses for b–h use the aggregate clustering assignment described in the main text and Methods.