Effect sizes in human functional neuroimaging

Emerging reports suggest that sample sizes commonly used in functional neuroimaging studies may be too small to detect many brain-behavior relationships, posing a major barrier to brain and mental health research. A central challenge is that planning robust studies requires researchers to know what effect sizes to expect, yet this essential information is surprisingly difficult to estimate in practice and thus often omitted from study planning. Critically, standard “mass univariate” procedures for estimating effects across multiple brain areas give an inflated picture of how large effect sizes are. Here, we introduce a method to correct this inflation bias and perform an unprecedented analysis of 63 studies in seven large datasets (n = 100–40,000; 52,979 total participants) to establish effect size benchmarks in functional neuroimaging. We find that between-subjects effects are exceedingly small at the majority of brain areas (Cohen’s |d| < 0.2), requiring consortium-level sample sizes to detect even some of the strongest focal brain effects (n > 500 at 80% statistical power with FDR correction). However, multivariate analyses and within-subject task designs yield substantially larger effect sizes that can be detected at sample sizes within reach of individual labs (n < 50). By establishing data-driven effect size benchmarks, these findings lay the groundwork for more informed study planning in neuroscience while highlighting shared challenges (and the potential for shared solutions) across biomedicine.