Neu­roimag­ing: Many Ana­lysts, Dif­fer­ing Results (Dana Foun­da­tion):

For decades, both the research and med­ical com­mu­ni­ties have relied on neu­roimag­ing tools like func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI) to give them a win­dow into the liv­ing human brain. Such scans have pro­vid­ed unprece­dent­ed insights into the brain’s struc­ture and func­tion – and the field, as a whole, has used this tech­nique to bet­ter under­stand how the brain gives rise to thoughts, emo­tions, and actions. But as neu­roimag­ing tech­nol­o­gy has advanced, so have the dif­fer­ent analy­sis tools and the num­ber of ways one can eval­u­ate the result­ing data. Now, the results of unique research project, the Neu­roimag­ing Analy­sis, Repli­ca­tion, and Pre­dic­tion Study (NARPS), sug­gest that dif­fer­ent analy­ses can lead to strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent results from the same data set.

[Read more…] about Flex­i­bil­i­ty is good except when it isn’t: Study finds how sci­en­tists can reach dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions ana­lyz­ing the same brain scans