Providing Evidence for the Null Hypothesis in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Using Group-Level Bayesian Inference

Autor: Ruslan Masharipov, Irina Knyazeva, Yaroslav Nikolaev, Alexander Korotkov, Michael Didur, Denis Cherednichenko, Maxim Kireev
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, Vol 15 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1662-5196
DOI: 10.3389/fninf.2021.738342
Popis: Classical null hypothesis significance testing is limited to the rejection of the point-null hypothesis; it does not allow the interpretation of non-significant results. This leads to a bias against the null hypothesis. Herein, we discuss statistical approaches to ‘null effect’ assessment focusing on the Bayesian parameter inference (BPI). Although Bayesian methods have been theoretically elaborated and implemented in common neuroimaging software packages, they are not widely used for ‘null effect’ assessment. BPI considers the posterior probability of finding the effect within or outside the region of practical equivalence to the null value. It can be used to find both ‘activated/deactivated’ and ‘not activated’ voxels or to indicate that the obtained data are not sufficient using a single decision rule. It also allows to evaluate the data as the sample size increases and decide to stop the experiment if the obtained data are sufficient to make a confident inference. To demonstrate the advantages of using BPI for fMRI data group analysis, we compare it with classical null hypothesis significance testing on empirical data. We also use simulated data to show how BPI performs under different effect sizes, noise levels, noise distributions and sample sizes. Finally, we consider the problem of defining the region of practical equivalence for BPI and discuss possible applications of BPI in fMRI studies. To facilitate ‘null effect’ assessment for fMRI practitioners, we provide Statistical Parametric Mapping 12 based toolbox for Bayesian inference.
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