Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Dec;53(4):1197-207.
doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.06.041. Epub 2010 Jun 25.

Network-based statistic: identifying differences in brain networks

Andrew Zalesky  1 , Alex Fornito, Edward T Bullmore
Affiliations

Network-based statistic: identifying differences in brain networks

Andrew Zalesky et al. Neuroimage. 2010 Dec.

Abstract

Large-scale functional or structural brain connectivity can be modeled as a network, or graph. This paper presents a statistical approach to identify connections in such a graph that may be associated with a diagnostic status in case-control studies, changing psychological contexts in task-based studies, or correlations with various cognitive and behavioral measures. The new approach, called the network-based statistic (NBS), is a method to control the family-wise error rate (in the weak sense) when mass-univariate testing is performed at every connection comprising the graph. To potentially offer a substantial gain in power, the NBS exploits the extent to which the connections comprising the contrast or effect of interest are interconnected. The NBS is based on the principles underpinning traditional cluster-based thresholding of statistical parametric maps. The purpose of this paper is to: (i) introduce the NBS for the first time; (ii) evaluate its power with the use of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves; and, (iii) demonstrate its utility with application to a real case-control study involving a group of people with schizophrenia for which resting-state functional MRI data were acquired. The NBS identified a expansive dysconnected subnetwork in the group with schizophrenia, primarily comprising fronto-temporal and occipito-temporal dysconnections, whereas a mass-univariate analysis controlled with the false discovery rate failed to identify a subnetwork.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources