Predictive Validity Comparison for Lesion-Behavior Mapping

Multivariate lesion-behavior mapping (LBM) provides a statistical map of the association between patterns of brain damage and individual differences in behavior. To understand whether behaviors are mediated by distinct brain regions, researchers often compare LBM beta weights by either the subtraction method (emphasizing differences) or the correlation method (emphasizing similarity). However, both methods lack a principled way to determine LBM distinctness and are disconnected from a major goal of LBMs: predicting behavior from brain damage. Without such criteria, researchers may unwittingly draw conclusions from numeric differences between LBMs that are irrelevant to predicting behavior from brain damage. John Magnotti, Jaclyn Patterson and I developed and validated a Predictive Validity Comparison (PVC) method that establishes such a criterion.

Download the shiny app here: PVC Dropbox Link  

PVC is written in R, and requires a working installation of LESYMAP and ANTsR. See the README files for installation details. 

For questions about this software, contact John Magnotti: johnmag AT upenn dot edu