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SummaryData analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and flexible. To assess the impact of this flexibility on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results, the same dataset was independently analyzed by 70 teams, testing nine ex-ante hypotheses. The flexibility of analytic approaches is exemplified by the fact that no two teams chose identical workflows to analyze the data. This flexibility resulted in sizeable variation in hypothesis test results, even for teams whose statistical maps were highly correlated at intermediate stages of their analysis pipeline. Variation in reported results was related to several aspects of analysis methodology. Importantly, meta-analytic approaches that aggregated information across teams yielded significant consensus in activated regions across teams. Furthermore, prediction markets of researchers in the field revealed an overestimation of the likelihood of significant findings, even by researchers with direct knowledge of the dataset. Our findings show that analytic flexibility can have substantial effects on scientific conclusions, and demonstrate factors related to variability in fMRI. The results emphasize the importance of validating and sharing complex analysis workflows, and demonstrate the need for multiple analyses of the same data. Potential approaches to mitigate issues related to analytical variability are discussed.

When choosing actions, humans have to balance carefully between different task demands. On the one hand, they should perform tasks repeatedly to avoid frequent and effortful switching between different tasks. On the other hand, subjects have to retain their flexibility to adapt to changes in external task demands such as switching away from an increasingly difficult task. Here, we developed a difficulty-based choice task to investigate how subjects voluntarily select task-sets in predictably changing environments. Subjects were free to choose 1 of the 3 task-sets on a trial-by-trial basis, while the task difficulty changed dynamically over time. Subjects self-sequenced their behavior in this environment while we measured brain responses with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Using multivariate decoding, we found that task choices were encoded in the medial prefrontal cortex (dorso-medial prefrontal cortex, dmPFC, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dACC). The same regions were found to encode task difficulty, a major factor influencing choices. Importantly, the present paradigm allowed us to disentangle the neural code for task choices and task difficulty, ensuring that activation patterns in dmPFC/dACC independently encode these 2 factors. This finding provides new evidence for the importance of the dmPFC/dACC for task-selection and motivational functions in highly dynamic environments.

Rewards obtained from specific behaviors can and do change across time. To adapt to such conditions, humans need to represent and update associations between behaviors and their outcomes. Much previous work focused on how rewards affect the processing of specific tasks. However, abstract associations between multiple potential behaviors and multiple rewards are an important basis for adaptation as well. In this experiment, we directly investigated which brain areas represent associations between multiple tasks and rewards, using time-resolved multivariate pattern analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Importantly, we were able to dissociate neural signals reflecting task-reward associations from those related to task preparation and reward expectation processes, variables that were often correlated in previous research. We hypothesized that brain regions involved in processing tasks and/or rewards will be involved in processing associations between them. Candidate areas included the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which is involved in associating simple actions and rewards, and the parietal cortex, which has been shown to represent task rules and action values. Our results indicate that local spatial activation patterns in the inferior parietal cortex indeed represent task-reward associations. Interestingly, the parietal cortex flexibly changes its content of representation within trials. It first represents task-reward associations, later switching to process tasks and rewards directly. These findings highlight the importance of the inferior parietal cortex in associating behaviors with their outcomes and further show that it can flexibly reconfigure its function within single trials.

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