Spurious correlations in surface-based functional brain imaging
The study of functional MRI data is increasingly performed after mapping from volumetric voxels to surface vertices. Processing pipelines commonly used to achieve this mapping produce meshes with uneven vertex spacing, with closer neighbours in sulci compared to gyri. Consequently, correlations between the fMRI time series of neighbouring sulcal vertices are stronger than expected. However, the causes, extent, and impacts of this bias are not well understood or widely appreciated. We explain the origins of these biases, and using in-silico models of fMRI data, illustrate how they lead to spurious results. The bias leads to leakage of anatomical cortical folding information into fMRI time series. We show that many common analyses can be affected by this "gyral bias", including test-retest reliability, fingerprinting, functional parcellations, regional homogeneity, and brain-behaviour associations. Finally, we provide recommendations to avoid or remedy this spatial bias.