During the past year, the topic of clustering and false positives rates in FMRI group analysis has been widely discussed both in research circles and in the popular press. A number of very strong claims were made in the initial paper by Eklund et al (2016, PNAS), both about previous methods in general and about AFNI in specific.

These are all important issues for our group. We have addressed them, as well as new developments within AFNI, in two recently accepted articles in PNAS and Brain Connectivity. Links to several PDF items can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6Sn11ZTBrhvOFBTYkJ4WXc5U3c

They are, in order of brevity to prolixity:

1) an “Executive Summary” of the main points in item 4
2) the Letter accepted in PNAS (a direct reply to Eklund et al)
3) slides outlining the situation and new developments (presented yesterday in the AFNI bootcamp)
4) the paper accepted in Brain Connectivity (quite lengthy)

Further changes to AFNI are in the works, which are hinted at in items 3 & 4 (the ETAC method). In the near future, changes will be made to AFNI to discourage the use of the “classic” (old) clustering method, which does not control the False Positive Rate well in many cases.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2017 01:21PM by Bob Cox.