Practice question · Multiple choice
A famous demonstration found significant fMRI activation in the brain of a dead salmon shown photographs. What was the point being made?
Hints
- How many separate statistical tests does a whole-brain fMRI analysis involve?
- The salmon is dead. So whatever the analysis found, where did it come from?
Show the answer
D. That with tens of thousands of voxels, some pass 0.05 by chance.
Why
Bennett and colleagues ran an ordinary uncorrected analysis on a dead salmon and found significant voxels in its brain cavity, nothing was malfunctioning. Tens of thousands of independent tests at alpha 0.05 guarantee a cluster somewhere. It changed practice quickly, largely because a dead fish is harder to ignore than a formula.
Practise Brain Imaging Techniques
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