Software faults raise questions about the validity of brain studies • Hacker News Board

Re: Software faults raise questions about the validity of brain studies

#21

Post by amelius » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 6:20 PM UTC

gaze wrote: post #19

amelius wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that if we're measuring bloodflow instead of neuron activity, then perhaps our knowledge of where in the brain something is happening might be off, but the results are not per se invalid. Things might only get tricky if more than one vessel feeds the same neuron.

Each blood vessel feeds hundreds of thousands of neurons.

That was not the point. Say you have a vessel A, and a vessel B, both feeding hundreds of thousands of neurons. Assume A and B both feed neuron X (one of those many neurons). Then A and/or B might fire up in a scan when X is active. The "and/or" is the tricky part.

Re: Software faults raise questions about the validity of brain studies

#22

Post by petra » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

Toenex wrote: post #10

I spent a few years in the late 90's and early 00's working on fMRI and I've been stunned by many of the claims that appear to arise from it's use. What's being measured relates to blood flow changes that correlate with an input block paradigm, typically from a visual stimulus. This isn't brain activity in the electrical sense but rather which areas of the brain appear to regulate their blood flow in relation to the…

Are there any ideas for new technologies that give a more meaningful signal than BOLD with reasonable spacial accuracy?

Re: Software faults raise questions about the validity of brain studies

#23

Post by cs2818 » Sat, Jul 02, 2016, 8:51 PM UTC

I am not sure if this would really be much of a shock to researchers who have spent time working with fMRI data.

I'm a computer science grad student, but spend at least half of my time taking courses and reading literature from the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Brain imaging studies have become very popular within many subfields of psychology, yet often the published analyses I encounter make inferences which are not necessarily well supported by the data.

It is encouraging that more researchers are making their raw data available. Currently many academics treat fMRI studies as some kind of infallible truth, when in reality it would be wise to give more consideration to the many sources of error that contribute to conclusions reached from imaging data. Hopefully the availability of raw data as a supplement to publications will help us gain more complete understandings.