TY - JOUR
T1 - Replicable brain–phenotype associations require large-scale neuroimaging data
AU - Liu, Shu
AU - Abdellaoui, Abdel
AU - Verweij, Karin J. H.
AU - van Wingen, Guido A.
N1 - Funding Information: This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource under application no. 30091. A.A. and K.J.H.V. are supported by the Foundation Volksbond Rotterdam. This work was supported by a China Scholarship Council (CSC) grant to S.L. G.v.W has received research funding by Philips for an unrelated project. The funders have no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2023/8
Y1 - 2023/8
N2 - Numerous neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural basis of interindividual differences but the replicability of brain–phenotype associations remains largely unknown. We used the UK Biobank neuroimaging dataset (N = 37,447) to examine associations with six variables related to physical and mental health: age, body mass index, intelligence, memory, neuroticism and alcohol consumption, and assessed the improvement of replicability for brain–phenotype associations with increasing sampling sizes. Age may require only 300 individuals to provide highly replicable associations but other phenotypes required 1,500 to 3,900 individuals. The required sample size showed a negative power law relation with the estimated effect size. When only comparing the upper and lower quarters, the minimally required sample sizes for imaging decreased by 15–75%. Our findings demonstrate that large-scale neuroimaging data are required for replicable brain–phenotype associations, that this can be mitigated by preselection of individuals and that small-scale studies may have reported false positive findings.
AB - Numerous neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural basis of interindividual differences but the replicability of brain–phenotype associations remains largely unknown. We used the UK Biobank neuroimaging dataset (N = 37,447) to examine associations with six variables related to physical and mental health: age, body mass index, intelligence, memory, neuroticism and alcohol consumption, and assessed the improvement of replicability for brain–phenotype associations with increasing sampling sizes. Age may require only 300 individuals to provide highly replicable associations but other phenotypes required 1,500 to 3,900 individuals. The required sample size showed a negative power law relation with the estimated effect size. When only comparing the upper and lower quarters, the minimally required sample sizes for imaging decreased by 15–75%. Our findings demonstrate that large-scale neuroimaging data are required for replicable brain–phenotype associations, that this can be mitigated by preselection of individuals and that small-scale studies may have reported false positive findings.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85162929089&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01642-5
DO - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01642-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 37365408
SN - 2397-3374
VL - 7
SP - 1344
EP - 1356
JO - Nature Human Behaviour
JF - Nature Human Behaviour
IS - 8
ER -