Fadiga Luciano
University of Ferrara, and Italian Institute of Technology, Genova, Italy.
Neuroimage. 2007 Oct 1;37(4):1042-4; discussion 1066-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.02.038. Epub 2007 Mar 6.
Brain imaging techniques largely spread in neuroscience literature. Due to initial technical limitations such as the very low signal-to-noise ratio, group experiments became the rule. This fact, together with the wide use of standard brains to localize the activations, lead several experimenters to the wrong idea that the brain can be described by a Cartesian coordinate system, neglecting at the same time the importance of individual neuroanatomy. My commentary on the paper by Devlin and Poldrack reinforces their reminder that it is necessary to deal with anatomy. Moreover, it adds some considerations on the relevance of single subjects studies and on the importance of the BOLD intensity signal, which should be used to describe brain activity together with the most used statistical tools.
脑成像技术在神经科学文献中广泛传播。由于最初存在诸如极低信噪比等技术限制，群体实验成为常态。这一事实，再加上广泛使用标准脑图谱来定位激活区域，导致一些实验者产生了错误观念，即大脑可以用笛卡尔坐标系来描述，同时忽视了个体神经解剖学的重要性。我对德夫林和波德拉克论文的评论强化了他们关于处理解剖学必要性的提醒。此外，还增加了一些关于单受试者研究的相关性以及血氧水平依赖（BOLD）强度信号重要性的思考，BOLD强度信号应与最常用的统计工具一起用于描述大脑活动。
