Two new ‘must-have’ books on functional MRI data analysis

Over the past decade, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become a basic and widely used research tool in neuroscience and psychology. Proper and effective usage of fMRI requires a high-level understanding of how the technology works, its neurobiological underpinnings, experimental design and statistics. Unfortunately, the average fMRI user currently lacks sufficient understanding of some of these areas, including the non-trivial statistics involved in the analysis and interpretation of fMRI data. Furthermore, over the past decade, various groups have developed sophisticated ‘push-button’ software that permits users to analyze fMRI data even if they lack a sufficient understanding of the underlying statistics. This has lead to a problematic state of affairs: although the best papers in the field are making fundamental advances in neuroscience and psychology, a lot of flawed studies are being published (with the acquiescence of reviewers and editors who also lack sufficient understanding)