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Review
. 2014 Jul 21;9(7):e101953.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0101953. eCollection 2014.

A review of fMRI simulation studies

Marijke Welvaert  1 , Yves Rosseel  1
Affiliations
Review

A review of fMRI simulation studies

Marijke Welvaert et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Simulation studies that validate statistical techniques for fMRI data are challenging due to the complexity of the data. Therefore, it is not surprising that no common data generating process is available (i.e. several models can be found to model BOLD activation and noise). Based on a literature search, a database of simulation studies was compiled. The information in this database was analysed and critically evaluated focusing on the parameters in the simulation design, the adopted model to generate fMRI data, and on how the simulation studies are reported. Our literature analysis demonstrates that many fMRI simulation studies do not report a thorough experimental design and almost consistently ignore crucial knowledge on how fMRI data are acquired. Advice is provided on how the quality of fMRI simulation studies can be improved.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Overview of number of articles for each publication year included in the survey.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Statistical models investigated in the selected articles.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Overview of the number of replications for single-subject and multi-subject simulations.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Overview of the different HRF functions used in the simulation studies (left) and illustration of the BOLD response shapes as the result of a block design fMRI experiment for the different HRF models (right, source: [24]).
Figure 5
Figure 5. Overview of the noise models in the synthetic simulation studies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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