Kaidi Kang is first author of Nature paper
Congratulations to PhD candidate Kaidi Kang on the publication of “Study design features increase replicability in brain-wide association studies” in Nature. Associate professor Simon Vandekar is senior corresponding author. Co-authors include PhD candidates Jiangmei Ruby Xiong and Megan Taylor Jones, associate professor Ran Tao, and professor Jonathan Schildcrout, plus colleagues at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Cambridge, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Minnesota.
In the paper, Kang et al. discuss their investigation of design and analysis approaches to improve replicability in brain-wide association studies (BWAS), a fundamental tool in discovering brain-behavior associations. Identifying how brain organization and function are linked to age and other measurements can help pave the way toward developing new treatment options for individuals with psychosis spectrum disorders and other neurological conditions. The paper offers guidance for optimizing BWAS design, addressing the real-world difficulty of increasing sample sizes to the extent required for higher replicability. Its recommendations “can be implemented without inflating the sample estimate of the underlying biological effect when using correctly specified models. By increasing the replicability of BWAS through study design, we can more efficiently utilize the US$1.8 billion average annual investment in neuroimaging research from the US National Institutes of Health.”
