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14 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Neuroscience · Replication Failure. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

Reproducible brain-wide association studies require thousands of individuals

Scott Marek, Brenden Tervo‐Clemmens, Finnegan J. Calabro et al. · 2022 · Nature

Abstract Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has transformed our understanding of the human brain through well-replicated mapping of abilities to specific structures (for example, lesion studies) and functions 1–3 (for example, task functional MRI (fMRI)). Mental health research and care have yet to realize similar advances from MRI. A primary challenge has been replicating associations between inter-individual differences in brain structure or function and complex cognitive or mental health phenotypes (brain-wide association studies (BWAS)). Such BWAS have typically relied on sample sizes approp

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

The effect of horizontal eye movements on free recall: A preregistered adversarial collaboration.

Dóra Matzke, Sander Nieuwenhuis, Hedderik van Rijn et al. · 2015 · Journal of Experimental Psychology General

A growing body of research has suggested that horizontal saccadic eye movements facilitate the retrieval of episodic memories in free recall and recognition memory tasks. Nevertheless, a minority of studies have failed to replicate this…

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

The psychometric function: The lapse rate revisited

Nicolaas Prins · 2012 · Journal of Vision

In their influential paper, Wichmann and Hill (2001) have shown that the threshold and slope estimates of a psychometric function may be severely biased when it is assumed that the lapse rate equals zero but lapses do, in fact, occur.…

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

Resting GABA and glutamate concentrations do not predict visual gamma frequency or amplitude

Helena Cousijn, Saskia Haegens, George Wallis et al. · 2014 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Gamma band oscillations arise in neuronal networks of interconnected GABAergic interneurons and excitatory pyramidal cells. A previous study found a correlation between visual gamma peak frequency, as measured with magnetoencephalography,…

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

Functional EEG connectivity in infants associates with later restricted and repetitive behaviours in autism; a replication study

Rianne Haartsen, Emily J. H. Jones, Elena V. Orekhova et al. · 2019 · Translational Psychiatry

We conducted a replication study of our prior report that increased alpha EEG connectivity at 14-months associates with later autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis, and dimensional variation in restricted interests/repetitive behaviours. 143 infants at high and low familial risk for ASD watched dynamic videos of spinning toys and women singing nursery rhymes while high-density EEG was recorded. Alpha functional connectivity (7-8 Hz) was calculated using the debiased weighted phase lag index. The final sample with clean data included low-risk infants (N = 20), and high-risk infants who at 36

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

The role of deliberate practice in expert performance: revisiting Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993)

Brooke N. Macnamara, Megha Maitra · 2019 · Royal Society Open Science

We sought to replicate Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer's (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer 1993 Psychol. Rev. 100 , 363–406) seminal study on deliberate practice. Ericsson et al . found that differences in retrospective estimates of accumulated amounts of deliberate practice corresponded to each skill level of student violinists. They concluded, ‘individual differences in ultimate performance can largely be accounted for by differential amounts of past and current levels of practice’ (p. 392). We reproduced the methodology with notable exceptions, namely (i) employing a double-blind proce

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

Genome-wide gene-based analysis suggests an association between Neuroligin 1 (NLGN1) and post-traumatic stress disorder

Varun Kilaru, Shruti V. Iyer, Lynn M. Almli et al. · 2016 · Translational Psychiatry

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develops in only some people following trauma exposure, but the mechanisms differentially explaining risk versus resilience remain largely unknown. PTSD is heritable but candidate gene studies and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified only a modest number of genes that reliably contribute to PTSD. New gene-based methods may help identify additional genes that increase risk for PTSD development or severity. We applied gene-based testing to GWAS data from the Grady Trauma Project (GTP), a primarily African American cohort, and identified two

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

Inconsistent Effects of Parietal α-tACS on Pseudoneglect across Two Experiments: A Failed Internal Replication

Domenica Veniero, Christopher Benwell, Merle M. Ahrens et al. · 2017 · Frontiers in Psychology

Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) is being investigated as an experimental and clinical interventional technique in human participants. While promising, important limitations have been identified, including weak effect sizes and high inter- and intra-individual variability of outcomes. Here, we compared two "inhibitory" tES-techniques with supposedly different mechanisms of action as to their effects on performance in a visuospatial attention task, and report on a direct replication attempt. In two experiments, 2 × 20 healthy participants underwent tES in three separate sessions testin

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

Lexical prediction in language comprehension: a replication study of grammatical gender effects in Dutch

Arnold Kochari, Monique Flecken · 2018 · Language Cognition and Neuroscience

An important question in predictive language processing is the extent to which prediction effects can reliably be measured on pre-nominal material (e.g. articles before nouns). Here, we present a large sample (N = 58) close replication of a study by Otten and van Berkum (2009). They report ERP modulations in relation to the predictability of nouns in sentences, measured on gender-marked Dutch articles. We used nearly identical materials, procedures, and data analysis steps. We fail to replicate the original effect, but do observe a pattern consistent with the original data. Methodological diff

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

Short-term transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation increases pupil size but does not affect EEG alpha power: A replication of Sharon et al. (2021, Journal of Neuroscience)

Beth Lloyd, Franz Wurm, Roy de Kleijn et al. · 2023 · Brain stimulation

BackgroundTranscutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) has been tested as a potential treatment for pharmaco-resistant epilepsy and depression. Its clinical efficacy is thought to depend on taVNS-induced activation of the locus coeruleus and other neuromodulator systems. However, unlike for invasive VNS in rodents, there is little evidence for an effect of taVNS on noradrenergic activity.ObjectiveWe attempted to replicate recently published findings by Sharon et al. (2021), showing that short bursts of taVNS transiently increased pupil size and decreased EEG alpha power, two correl

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

Replicating five pupillometry studies of Eckhard Hess

Joost de Winter, Sebastiaan M. Petermeijer, Lars Kooijman et al. · 2021 · International Journal of Psychophysiology

Several papers by Eckhard Hess from the 1960s and 1970s report that the pupils dilate or constrict according to the interest value, arousing content, or mental demands of visual stimuli. However, Hess mostly used small sample sizes and undocumented luminance control. In a first experiment (N = 182) and a second preregistered experiment (N = 147), we replicated five studies of Hess using modern equipment. Our experiments (1) did not support the hypothesis of gender differences in pupil diameter change with respect to baseline (PC) when viewing stimuli of different interest value, (2) showed tha

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Replication FailureOpen accessNeuroscience

Pridopidine in early-stage manifest Huntington’s disease: a phase 3 trial

Ralf Reilmann, Andrew Feigin, Anne Rosser et al. · 2025 · Nature Medicine

Huntington's disease (HD) is a rare, neurodegenerative disorder for which only symptomatic treatments are available. The PROOF-HD study was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 trial evaluating the efficacy and safety of pridopidine, a selective Sigma-1 receptor agonist, in HD. The primary and key secondary endpoints, change in total functional capacity (TFC) and composite Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale (cUHDRS) score at week 65, were not met in the overall population. The TFC least-squares mean difference between pridopidine and placebo was -0.18 (95% confidence i

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