Small Sample Studies in fMRI Neuroscience

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Neuroscience is a relatively new discipline, with the first fMRI experiment having been performed as recently as 1991. Due to the expensive and time consuming nature of the method, small sample studies are historically ubiquitous in the fMRI literature. For instance, in 2018 the median sample size of high-impact neuroimaging papers was only n=24, with an average sample size across all literature of n=60 ([1],[2]). Such sample sizes are problematic, as they result in lower statistical power, increased risk of false positives, and reduced generalizability of findings; problems which are greatly exacerbated in the large data imaging setting.

This talk was originally given at the Thematic Einstein Seminar (TES) series at the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) on the 18th January 2024.