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Abstract #0918

Task-fMRI: pre-whitening and hemodynamic response function modeling substantially impair specificity and sensitivity

Wiktor Olszowy1, John Aston2, Richard Henson3, Catarina Rua1, and Guy B Williams1

1Dept. of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2Dept. of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 3MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Given the recent controversies in some neuroimaging statistical methods, we investigated pre-whitening and hemodynamic response function (HRF) modeling techniques available in AFNI, FSL and SPM and used in task-fMRI studies. We found that pre-whitening often leaves much positive autocorrelated noise in the data, which leads primarily to false positives. Also, we observed that for an event-related design dataset, the use of the simple canonical HRF led to a strong sensitivity deterioration. Currently, both specificity and sensitivity could be increased in task-fMRI studies with some less popular, but widely available statistical methods.

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