Dec 9, 2020 01:05 AM
https://apnews.com/article/why-some-scie...c7c49e9421
EXCERPTS: Studies of brain images have suggested that Republicans and Democrats have visibly different thinking, that overweight adults have stronger responses to pictures of food and that it’s possible to predict a sober person’s likelihood of relapse. But such buzzy findings are coming under growing scrutiny as scientists grapple with the fact that some brain scan research doesn’t seem to hold up.
Such studies have been criticized for relying on too few subjects and for incorrectly analyzing or interpreting data. Researchers have also realized a person’s brain scan results can differ from day to day — even under identical conditions — casting a doubt on how to document consistent patterns.
With so many questions being raised, some researchers are acknowledging the scans’ limitations and working to overcome them or simply turning to other tests. Earlier this year, Duke University researcher Annchen Knodt’s lab published the latest paper challenging the reliability of common brain scan projects, based on about 60 studies of the past decade including her own. “We found this poor result across the board,” Knodt said. “We’re basically discrediting much of the work we’ve done.”
The research being re-examined relies on a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. [...] In 2009, a group of scientists investigated papers that had linked individual differences in brain activity to various personality types. They found many used a type of analysis that reported only the strongest correlations, leading to potentially coincidental conclusions. A “disturbingly large” amount of fMRI research on emotion and personality relied on these “seriously defective research methods,” the group wrote.
Later that year, another pair of researchers demonstrated that the raw results of imaging scans — without the proper statistical corrections — could detect brain activity in a dead Atlantic salmon. Four years ago, another group of scientists claimed a different common statistical error had led thousands of fMRI projects astray.
This year, Stanford University researchers described what happened when they gave the same fMRI data to 70 groups of independent neuroscientists. No two teams used the same analysis methods and, overall, the researchers did not always come to the same conclusions about what the data demonstrated about brain activity.
“In the end, we probably jumped on the fMRI bandwagon a little too fast. It’s reached the threshold of concern for a lot of us,” said Duke neuroscientist Anita Disney. [...] That doesn’t mean everyone is walking away from fMRI. Some surgeons depend on the technique to map a patient’s brain before surgeries, and the technology has proven itself useful for broadly mapping the neural mechanisms of diseases such as schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: Studies of brain images have suggested that Republicans and Democrats have visibly different thinking, that overweight adults have stronger responses to pictures of food and that it’s possible to predict a sober person’s likelihood of relapse. But such buzzy findings are coming under growing scrutiny as scientists grapple with the fact that some brain scan research doesn’t seem to hold up.
Such studies have been criticized for relying on too few subjects and for incorrectly analyzing or interpreting data. Researchers have also realized a person’s brain scan results can differ from day to day — even under identical conditions — casting a doubt on how to document consistent patterns.
With so many questions being raised, some researchers are acknowledging the scans’ limitations and working to overcome them or simply turning to other tests. Earlier this year, Duke University researcher Annchen Knodt’s lab published the latest paper challenging the reliability of common brain scan projects, based on about 60 studies of the past decade including her own. “We found this poor result across the board,” Knodt said. “We’re basically discrediting much of the work we’ve done.”
The research being re-examined relies on a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. [...] In 2009, a group of scientists investigated papers that had linked individual differences in brain activity to various personality types. They found many used a type of analysis that reported only the strongest correlations, leading to potentially coincidental conclusions. A “disturbingly large” amount of fMRI research on emotion and personality relied on these “seriously defective research methods,” the group wrote.
Later that year, another pair of researchers demonstrated that the raw results of imaging scans — without the proper statistical corrections — could detect brain activity in a dead Atlantic salmon. Four years ago, another group of scientists claimed a different common statistical error had led thousands of fMRI projects astray.
This year, Stanford University researchers described what happened when they gave the same fMRI data to 70 groups of independent neuroscientists. No two teams used the same analysis methods and, overall, the researchers did not always come to the same conclusions about what the data demonstrated about brain activity.
“In the end, we probably jumped on the fMRI bandwagon a little too fast. It’s reached the threshold of concern for a lot of us,” said Duke neuroscientist Anita Disney. [...] That doesn’t mean everyone is walking away from fMRI. Some surgeons depend on the technique to map a patient’s brain before surgeries, and the technology has proven itself useful for broadly mapping the neural mechanisms of diseases such as schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s... (MORE - details)
