Power-law dynamics in neuronal and behavioral data introduce spurious correlations.

ABSTRACT: Relating behavioral and neuroimaging measures is essential to understanding human brain function. Often, this is achieved by computing a correlation between behavioral measures, e.g., reaction times, and neurophysiological recordings, e.g., prestimulus EEG alpha-power, on a single-trial-basis. This approach treats individual trials as independent measurements and ignores the fact that data are acquired in a temporal order. It has already been shown that behavioral measures as well as neurophysiological recordings display power-law dynamics, which implies that trials are not in fact independent. Critically, computing the correlation coefficient between two measures exhibiting long-range temporal dependencies may introduce spurious correlations, thus leading to erroneous conclusions about th

SUBMITTER: Schaworonkow N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6869015 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature