Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Nonsense correlations in neuroscience

Kenneth D. Harris
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.29.402719
Kenneth D. Harris
UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: kenneth.harris@ucl.ac.uk
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Many neurophysiological signals exhibit slow continuous trends over time. Because standard correlation analyses assume that all samples are independent, they can yield apparently significant “nonsense correlations” even for signals that are completely unrelated. Here we compare the performance of several methods for assessing correlations between timeseries, using simulated slowly drifting signals with and without genuine correlations. The best performance was obtained from a “pseudosession method”, which relies on one of the signals being randomly generated by the experimenter, or a “session perturbation” method which requires multiple recordings under the same conditions. If neither of these is applicable, we find that a “linear shift” method can work well, but only when one of the signals is stationary. Methods based on cross-validation, circular shifting, phase randomization, or detrending gave up to 100% false positive rates in our simulations. We conclude that analysis of neural timeseries is best performed when stationarity and randomization is built into the experimental design.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Corrected typos.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted November 30, 2020.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Nonsense correlations in neuroscience
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Nonsense correlations in neuroscience
Kenneth D. Harris
bioRxiv 2020.11.29.402719; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.29.402719
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Nonsense correlations in neuroscience
Kenneth D. Harris
bioRxiv 2020.11.29.402719; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.29.402719

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4658)
  • Biochemistry (10313)
  • Bioengineering (7636)
  • Bioinformatics (26241)
  • Biophysics (13481)
  • Cancer Biology (10650)
  • Cell Biology (15361)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (8464)
  • Ecology (12776)
  • Epidemiology (2067)
  • Evolutionary Biology (16794)
  • Genetics (11373)
  • Genomics (15431)
  • Immunology (10580)
  • Microbiology (25087)
  • Molecular Biology (10172)
  • Neuroscience (54233)
  • Paleontology (398)
  • Pathology (1660)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2884)
  • Physiology (4326)
  • Plant Biology (9213)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1582)
  • Synthetic Biology (2545)
  • Systems Biology (6761)
  • Zoology (1459)