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This fMRI technique promised to transform brain research — why can no one replicate it?

The DIANA technique sparked excitement from neuroscientists. But two new papers have cast doubt over the results.
  1. McKenzie Prillaman

    1. McKenzie Prillaman is a freelance science journalist in Washington DC.

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Coloured functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan of a healthy human brain at rest.

Coloured functional magnetic resonance imaging of a healthy brain at rest. Credit: Mark & Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute/Science Photo Library

It was hailed as a potentially transformative technique for measuring brain activity in animals: direct imaging of neuronal activity (DIANA) held the promise of mapping neuronal activity so fast that neurons could be tracked as they fired. But nearly two years on from the 2022 Science paper1, no one outside the original research group and their collaborators has been able to reproduce the results.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00931-x

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 16 April 2024: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the specific number of mice involved in one of Kim’s analyses — it was one mouse.

  • Clarification 16 April 2024: An earlier version of this story did not make clear what was causing the fluctuation in the MRI signal.

References

  1. Toi, P. T. et al. Science 378, eabh4340 (2022).

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  2. Choi, S.-H. et al. Sci. Adv. 10, eadl0999 (2024).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Phi Van, V. D., Sen, S. & Jasanoff, A. Sci. Adv. 10, adl2034 (2024).

    Article  Google Scholar 

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