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fMRI machines are expensive as hell, most institutions share a few between multiple labs and even if they do get a new one don't decommission the old. IIRC the

fMRI machines are expensive as hell, most institutions share a few between multiple labs and even if they do get a new one don't decommission the old. IIRC the dead fish result had more to do with software than hardware though. My understanding is that the best of the best labs are careful with the analysis techniques applied, and they wouldn't have even made the dead fish mistake back then. The commonly used analysis tools are continually improved, so improvements may have propagated to the median fMRI group, but to be honest I still start out skeptical of most fMRI papers unless they're from a group I have prior reason to trust (or they include other data types besides just scans). Too many groups just apply the popular pipelines without an understanding of what they are doing, leading to misuse of tools. I'm tangential to the fMRI field though, so take with a grain of salt.

MichaelZuo 5y ago
fMRI uses the highest powered MRI machines with perhaps slightly higher quality and calibration right? Has there been any improvement in the baseline quality once you exclude the dubious groups?
- caddemon 5y ago
  TBH I'm not sure exactly what the hardware entails, I just work on the same floor as a couple labs that use the fMRI facilities so I know how much people stress over booking time on the machines. They somewhat recently added a new one that has stronger magnets but the older ones are still frequently booked solid too. From a neuroscience perspective I do think the good fMRI labs have improved their analyses over time. One thing increasing in popularity that has been helpful IMO is scanning the same participant across multiple days. It's a pain in the ass to get people to come back so it has generally been the norm to scan each participant in a study only once. But more powerful analysis techniques can be performed with these multi-scan datasets, as heterogeneity between and within individuals can be better accounted for. This review focuses on the default network, but it mentions how the discovery that the default network is actually multiple networks that were being blurred together was enabled by the multi-scan approach. It also gives a decent general gist of some of the things that have been reliably reported in fMRI research versus some things that are lacking, but mainly just from the perspective of questions about the default network: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31492945/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31492945/ I also like the following paper as a deep dive into the scans of a single person, because he splits apart some seemingly small things like having coffee/breakfast in the morning and shows the effect on scan results. I also think a multi-modal approach is really helpful, so I appreciate the other datatypes included. Plus it's kind of funny the PI wrote a paper entirely about himself: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9885 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9885 So yeah I think there is some self reflection and progress being made in the field in a meta sense, it just unfortunately can be drowned out (especially for people in other fields or even subfields of neuro) by the sheer popularity of shitting out fMRI papers.
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    Thanks that’s really interesting stuff. Since machine availability is a big pain point it would be interesting if anyone’s run the numbers on when it becomes worth it to organize a few groups to buy a machine. A solely research dedicated one.

MichaelZuo 5y ago

fMRI uses the highest powered MRI machines with perhaps slightly higher quality and calibration right? Has there been any improvement in the baseline quality once you exclude the dubious groups?

caddemon 5y ago
TBH I'm not sure exactly what the hardware entails, I just work on the same floor as a couple labs that use the fMRI facilities so I know how much people stress over booking time on the machines. They somewhat recently added a new one that has stronger magnets but the older ones are still frequently booked solid too. From a neuroscience perspective I do think the good fMRI labs have improved their analyses over time. One thing increasing in popularity that has been helpful IMO is scanning the same participant across multiple days. It's a pain in the ass to get people to come back so it has generally been the norm to scan each participant in a study only once. But more powerful analysis techniques can be performed with these multi-scan datasets, as heterogeneity between and within individuals can be better accounted for. This review focuses on the default network, but it mentions how the discovery that the default network is actually multiple networks that were being blurred together was enabled by the multi-scan approach. It also gives a decent general gist of some of the things that have been reliably reported in fMRI research versus some things that are lacking, but mainly just from the perspective of questions about the default network: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31492945/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31492945/ I also like the following paper as a deep dive into the scans of a single person, because he splits apart some seemingly small things like having coffee/breakfast in the morning and shows the effect on scan results. I also think a multi-modal approach is really helpful, so I appreciate the other datatypes included. Plus it's kind of funny the PI wrote a paper entirely about himself: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9885 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9885 So yeah I think there is some self reflection and progress being made in the field in a meta sense, it just unfortunately can be drowned out (especially for people in other fields or even subfields of neuro) by the sheer popularity of shitting out fMRI papers.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  Thanks that’s really interesting stuff. Since machine availability is a big pain point it would be interesting if anyone’s run the numbers on when it becomes worth it to organize a few groups to buy a machine. A solely research dedicated one.