ArticleNeuroImage2020
Cluster failure or power failure? Evaluating sensitivity in cluster-level inference.
Article in NeuroImage, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The effects of childhood adversity: Two specific neural patterns.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Evaluation of thresholding methods for activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis via large-scale simulations.Human brain mapping · 2022Pooled it
- Cortical gyrification predicts initial treatment response in adults with ADHD.Translational psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Task-specific theta enhancement and domain-general alpha/beta suppression as oscillatory signatures of cognitive flexibility.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Neural Markers of Interocular Grouping During Binocular Rivalry With MEG.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Evaluating Approaches for Inference Testing of Whole-Brain Densely Sampled Single-Subject Task fMRI Data.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Effect sizes in human functional neuroimaging.Research square · 2026Article
- The Hidden Landscape of Missed Effects in Human Functional Neuroimaging.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The Incremental Cluster Threshold-Free Cluster Enhancement Algorithm for Functional Connectivity Analysis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Statistical agnostic regression: A machine learning method to validate regression models.Journal of advanced research · 2026Article
- PRISME: A MATLAB Toolbox For Large Data-Driven Multimodal Power Benchmarking.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Dissociable effects of LSD and MDMA on striato-cortical connectivity in healthy subjects.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Local and network neural activations and their associations with sleep parameters during threat conditioning and extinction in persons with Generalized Anxiety Disorder with and without Insomnia Disorder.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neural correlates of inattention in adults with ADHD.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2025Article
- Intrinsic Functional Connectivity Associated with γ‑Aminobutyric Acid and Glutamate/Glutamine in the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex and Internalizing Psychopathology in Adolescents.Neuroscience bulletin · 2025Article
- Bias in data-driven replicability analysis of univariate brain-wide association studies.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Functional and structural connectivity of the subregions of the amygdala in ADHD children with or without ODD.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Seeing more than the Tip of the Iceberg: Approaches to Subthreshold Effects in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain.Clinical neuroradiology · 2024Review
- Precision fMRI and cluster-failure in the individual brain.Human brain mapping · 2024Article
- A mediation approach in resting-state connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate in mild cognitive impairment.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Pioneering work in human neuroscience has relied on the ability to map brain function using task-based fMRI, but the empirical validity of these inferential methods is still being characterized. A recent landmark study by Eklund and colleagues showed that popular multiple comparison corrections based on cluster extent suffer from unexpectedly low specificity (i.e., high false positive rate). Yet that study's focus on specificity, while important, is incomplete. The validity of a method depends also on its sensitivity (i.e., true positive rate or power), yet the sensitivity of cluster correction remains poorly understood. Here, we assessed the sensitivity of gold-standard nonparametric cluster correction by resampling real data from five tasks in the Human Connectome Project and comparing results with those from the full "ground truth" datasets (n = 480-493). Critically, we found that sensitivity after correction is lower than may be practical for many fMRI applications. In particular, sensitivity to medium-sized effects (|Cohen's d| = 0.5) was less than 20% across tasks on average, about three times smaller than without any correction. Furthermore, cluster extent correction exhibited a spatial bias in sensitivity that was independent of effect size. In comparison, correction based on the Threshold-Free Cluster Enhancement (TFCE) statistic approximately doubled sensitivity across tasks but increased spatial bias. These results suggest that we have, until now, only measured the tip of the iceberg in the activation-mapping literature due to our goal of limiting the familywise error rate through cluster extent-based inference. There is a need to revise our practices to improve sensitivity; we therefore conclude with a list of modern strategies to boost sensitivity while maintaining respectable specificity in future investigations.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.