Past, Present and Future of Open Science (Emergent session): Proposals to define, test and address confounding in fMRI

[jsheunis]

Proposals to define, test and address confounding in fMRI

By Manjari Narayan, Stanford University

• Theme: Past, Present and Future of Open Science
• Format: Emergent session

Abstract

Advances in open source tools and pipelines like fmriprep and the BIDS ecosystem make it feasible to conduct more thorough investigations of putative nuisance variables as good proxies for confounding as defined in recent work in theoretical epidemiology.

The goal would be to have a discussion on theoretical definitions of confounding in the literature because doing so will clarify how to structure models that incorporate control for confounding in a more principled way and to design tests/benchmarks for deciding when sets of variables constitute good surrogate confounders.

Participants will discuss at least one of the following questions

1. What do we think of recent formal definitions of confounding (as opposed to non-confounding) bias in theoretical epidemiology? Can we use this to clarify colloquial usage of noise/nuisance/confound variables in neuroimaging and create a better consensus on terms used and types of bias?

2. How do we empirically test assumptions regarding whether there is residual confounding in data?

3. What are current approaches being used in the context of non-BOLD (e.g. motion), BOLD (e.g. vascular), demographic/sampling biases (which includes both confounding and selection bias due to epidemiological design) in fMRI studies? How can researchers who work on these problems benefit from recent theoretical clarify on confounding?

4. Can or should we organize a special issue or some kind of manylabs challenge to empirically test presence of residual confounding and validity of current approaches in accounting for them? This could involve planned/pre-registered analyses of different datasets with different epidemiological study designs with different strategies.

Useful Links

Tagging @mnarayan

[mnarayan]

Tagging @pbellec

[complexbrains]

This event has been scheduled to be run on 03.07.2020, 18:00- 19:00 GMT

For more information, please go to https://ohbm.github.io/osr2020/schedule/emea

[mnarayan]

Created an etherpad for note taking during the session
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/OHBM-OSR-Confounding

Also anyone who might want to be involved in the theory working group can request to join
https://groups.google.com/g/ohbm-confounding