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How to establish robust brain–behavior relationships without thousands of individuals

Nature Neuroscience (2022)Cite this article

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Can studying individual differences in brain structure and function reveal individual differences in behavior? Analyses of MRI data from nearly 50,000 individuals may suggest that the possibility is fleeting. Although sample size is important for brain-based prediction, researchers can take other steps to build better biomarkers. These include testing model generalizability across people, datasets, and time points and maximizing model robustness by optimizing brain data acquisition, behavioral measures, and prediction approaches.

In a recent Nature paper, Marek, Tervo-Clemmens, and colleagues1 investigated whether individual differences in brains predict individual differences in behavior. To do so, they analyzed publicly available MRI and behavioral data from thousands of volunteers, correlating tens of thousands of measures of brain function (functional connections measured with functional MRI) and structure (cortical thickness estimates measured with structural MRI) with dozens of measures of cognition and psychopathology. Although they identified relationships between brain measures and behavior, these correlations were unlikely to replicate unless they were defined using MRI data from thousands of individuals. Furthermore, the strongest correlations — which are presumably the most likely to be published — were the least likely to replicate in new data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Monica D. Rosenberg

  2. Neuroscience Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Monica D. Rosenberg

  3. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    Emily S. Finn

Authors
  1. Monica D. Rosenberg
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  2. Emily S. Finn
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Correspondence to Monica D. Rosenberg or Emily S. Finn.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Rosenberg, M.D., Finn, E.S. How to establish robust brain–behavior relationships without thousands of individuals. Nat Neurosci (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01110-9

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