What Is the Test-Retest Reliability of Common Task-Functional MRI Measures? New Empirical Evidence and a Meta-Analysis

Identifying brain biomarkers of disease risk is a growing priority in neuroscience. The ability to identify meaningful biomarkers is limited by measurement reliability; unreliable measures are unsuitable for predicting clinical outcomes. Measuring brain activity using task functional MRI (fMRI) is a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science Vol. 31; no. 7; pp. 792 - 806
Main Authors: Elliott, Maxwell L., Knodt, Annchen R., Ireland, David, Morris, Meriwether L., Poulton, Richie, Ramrakha, Sandhya, Sison, Maria L., Moffitt, Terrie E., Caspi, Avshalom, Hariri, Ahmad R.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.07.2020
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
Biological markers
Biomarkers
Brain
Brain - physiology
Brain activity
Clinical outcomes
Cognition - physiology
Connectome - methods
Discovery
Experiments
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Humans
Individuality
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Measurement
Measures
Meta-analysis
Reliability
Reproducibility of Results
Systematic review
Test validity and reliability
Test-Retest reliability
Treatment outcomes
statistical analysis
cognitive neuroscience
neuroimaging
individual differences
ISSN:0956-7976, 1467-9280, 1467-9280
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Identifying brain biomarkers of disease risk is a growing priority in neuroscience. The ability to identify meaningful biomarkers is limited by measurement reliability; unreliable measures are unsuitable for predicting clinical outcomes. Measuring brain activity using task functional MRI (fMRI) is a major focus of biomarker development; however, the reliability of task fMRI has not been systematically evaluated. We present converging evidence demonstrating poor reliability of task-fMRI measures. First, a meta-analysis of 90 experiments (N = 1,008) revealed poor overall reliability—mean intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = .397. Second, the test-retest reliabilities of activity in a priori regions of interest across 11 common fMRI tasks collected by the Human Connectome Project (N = 45) and the Dunedin Study (N = 20) were poor (ICCs = .067–.485). Collectively, these findings demonstrate that common task-fMRI measures are not currently suitable for brain biomarker discovery or for individual-differences research. We review how this state of affairs came to be and highlight avenues for improving task-fMRI reliability.
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ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797620916786