However, splitting the RSA computation into two steps may lead to information loss. A single-step approach using regression or hierarchical modeling appears to improve precision, reliability and interpretability in estimating representational similarity. arxiv.org/abs/2511.00395

Thanks to Zhengchen Cai, @kordinglab.bsky.social, Tom Liu, Josh Faskowitz, @fmri-today.bsky.social, Bharat Biswal, and @afni-pt.bsky.social for fueling this ride and helping turn it into a commentary.

Has resting-state fMRI leaned too much on inductive, data-driven modeling? It can reveal patterns, but also spurious results and weak explanations, the classic "tail wagging the dog." The real challenge is restoring theory-driven, deductive modeling to guide the science.

...but leaning solely on correlation carries hazards: omnipresent noise, over-interpretation, and a canyon separating correlation from true neural mechanisms. And when correlations start masquerading as causes? Welcome to the land of chaos, confusion, and boobytraps.

Well, whenever you take a break from being a task guy… don’t you technically become a rest guy?

Quite interesting! Are we veering into an ontological vs epistemological distinction here? Conceptually, brain activity can be decomposed into task-independent and task-induced components, but practically, the boundary between them is often blurred and difficult to disentangle in real data.

So does it boil down to this: trading one flavor of contamination (task engagement) for another (microsleep roulette)?

Has neuroimaging reached the glorious era where a magical residualization spell can summon the latent resting-state signal from the ashes of task-induced disruption? I’d love to see such an incantation, especially if it comes with a modeling wand.

Thanks for the kind shoutout! It was a pleasure rambling about statistics, science, and their rocky relationship. Grateful the audience didn’t throw tomatoes or shoes. I'm taking that as strong evidence of tolerance for variability and uncertainty. Am I allowed to skip the p-value for that evidence?

As an occasional coder, I’d bet LLM-assisted programming could save me from many debugging nightmares and improve code modularity. As for the AI programmer Devin? Sounds intriguing, but I’ll need to save more pennies to experience its full wizardry.