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Study Design and Efficiency. Tom Jenkins Catherine Mulvenna. How the class will go…. Choosing the right study design for your experimental question (Catherine) How the design affects your efficiency (Tom) . What is involved in study design?. How you present the data
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Study Design and Efficiency Tom Jenkins Catherine Mulvenna
How the class will go… • Choosing the right study design for your experimental question (Catherine) • How the design affects your efficiency (Tom)
What is involved in study design? • How you present the data • Block Vs event-related design • How you present the experimental question • Psychological validity • fMRI is as worthwhile as the design of the experiment using it.
The most commonly used fMRI paradigm is blocked design • A BLOCK: a series of trials is presented during a discrete epoch of time. • BLOCKED DESIGN: different conditions are assigned to different blocks. The signal acquired in different blocks is contrasted.
Blocked design • e.g localise a specific brain region showing the response to one type of stimulus (e.g. faces vs houses) • For good reviews see Binder & Rao 1994; D’Esposito et al., 1999 • Assumptions of the Block Design: "Neural structures supporting cognitive and behavioural processes combine in a simple additive manner." • Also you may not be able to test certain things with such a design…
Event Related Design • Types of trials are interleaved and each trial is modelled separately as an ‘event’ e.g. AABABBAB
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Blocked Alternating Random Sequencing of events Deterministic designs: the occurrence of events is pre-determined e.g. a blocked design or alternating design (all the probabilities are zero or one ) Stochastic designs: the occurrence of an event depends on a a specified probability e.g. random or permuted design Stochastic designs can be stationary or dynamic Permuted
Advantages of efMRI • Can randomise or counterbalance trial order to reduce contextual bias and minimise differences related to cognitive ‘set’ or strategy use. • Some experimental designs cannot be blocked e.g. oddball designs. • Can use post-hoc classification of trials e.g. separately model trials with correct or incorrect responses, following post-scanning testing or depending on subjective perception. • Improves temporal resolution such that you can look at events on a shorter time scale.
Disadvantage of efMRI • Typically less efficient than blocked designs - Tom.
Psychological validity “the brain may be gray and nondescript on the outside, but on the inside it's a well-practiced liar.”
Psychological Validity in fMRI Studies • Validity: Is the test measuring what it is supposed to measure? • Ask others what they think alternative explanations for your results are. Incorporate these into your study. • E.g. of poor validity…
When deciding on the tasks… • A study’s design is only as good as the tasks that have been chosen. • There should be as few explanations for your resulting data as possible. • If a result is surprising, look back to your task. • http://www.wilderdom.com/personality/L3-2EssentialsGoodPsychologicalTest.html#Validity