ReviewNature neuroscience2020
Using Bayes factor hypothesis testing in neuroscience to establish evidence of absence.
Review in Nature neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 329 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
329 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Absence of Evidence of Beneficial Effects of Human Milk-Based Fortifier: A Bayesian Model-Averaged Meta-Analysis.Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992) · 2025Pooled it
- Brain-wide decoding of numbers and letters: Converging evidence from multivariate fMRI analysis and probabilistic meta-analysis.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- Association between Antenatal Antibiotic Exposure and Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia: A Systematic Review and Bayesian Model-Averaged Meta-Analysis.Neonatology · 2024Pooled it
- COVID-19 risk, course and outcome in people with mental disorders: a systematic review and meta-analyses.Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences · 2023Pooled it
- COVID-19-related changes in eating disorder pathology, emotional and binge eating and need for care: a systematic review with frequentist and Bayesian meta-analyses.Eating and weight disorders : EWD · 2023Pooled it
- Robust Bayesian meta-analysis: Model-averaging across complementary publication bias adjustment methods.Research synthesis methods · 2023Pooled it
- Lack of association between pretreatment glutamate/GABA and major depressive disorder treatment response.Translational psychiatry · 2025Trial
- Neurofeedback and attention modulate somatosensory alpha oscillations but not pain perception.PLoS biology · 2025Trial
- Dopamine has no direct causal role in the formation of treatment expectations and placebo analgesia in humans.PLoS biology · 2024Trial
- Cognitive control training with domain-general response inhibition does not change children's brains or behavior.Nature neuroscience · 2024Trial
- Transcranial static magnetic field stimulation of the supplementary motor area decreases corticospinal excitability in the motor cortex: a pilot study.Scientific reports · 2024Trial
- Positive emotion up-regulation is resistant to working memory load: An electrocortical investigation of reappraisal and savoring.Psychophysiology · 2023Trial
- Open-label placebo treatment does not enhance cognitive abilities in healthy volunteers.Scientific reports · 2023Trial
- Trial
- Experience Modulates Visuocortical Responses to Faces in 3- to 6-Year-Old Children.Journal of experimental child psychology · 2027Article
- Uncovering Latent Cognitive, Metacognitive, and Neural Bases of Problem-Solving Deficits in Children with Developmental Dyscalculia.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Weighting of Spectral and Temporal Cues with n-of-m Cochlear Implant Strategies Depends on Voice Pitch.Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology : JARO · 2026Article
- Neurocomputational Mechanisms Linking Future Interaction Prospects to Reactive and Proactive Costly Punishment.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Off-target effects of DREADD ligands revealed by an anesthesia emergence paradigm in mice.Cell reports methods · 2026Article
- Imbalanced cortisol/BDNF signals and oxidative stress underscore temporary cognitive impairment in deep divers after in water/surface decompression: proof of concept.European journal of applied physiology · 2026Article
269 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Most neuroscientists would agree that for brain research to progress, we have to know which experimental manipulations have no effect as much as we must identify those that do have an effect. The dominant statistical approaches used in neuroscience rely on P values and can establish the latter but not the former. This makes non-significant findings difficult to interpret: do they support the null hypothesis or are they simply not informative? Here we show how Bayesian hypothesis testing can be used in neuroscience studies to establish both whether there is evidence of absence and whether there is absence of evidence. Through simple tutorial-style examples of Bayesian t-tests and ANOVA using the open-source project JASP, this article aims to empower neuroscientists to use this approach to provide compelling and rigorous evidence for the absence of an effect.
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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.