Reproducible brain-wide association studies require thousands of individuals

🤖 Plain-English Summary

Abstract Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has transformed our understanding of the human brain through well-replicated mapping of abilities to specific structures (for example, lesion studies) and functions 1–3 (for example, task functional MRI (fMRI)). Smaller than expected brain–phenotype associations and variability across population subsamples can explain widespread BWAS replication failures.

🔑 Key Findings

• Mental health research and care have yet to realize similar advances from MRI.
• A primary challenge has been replicating associations between inter-individual differences in brain structure or function and complex cognitive or mental health phenotypes (brain-wide association studies (BWAS)).
• Such BWAS have typically relied on sample sizes appropriate for classical brain mapping 4 (the median neuroimaging study sample size is about 25), but potentially too small for capturing reproducible brain–behavioural phenotype associations 5,6 .

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