Using SPM.mat to Stay on Track

Life, I have observed, is a constant struggle between our civilized taste for the clean, the neat, and the orderly, on the one hand, and the untrammeled powers of disorganization, disorder, and chaos, on the other. We feel compelled to organize our household and our domestic sphere, including the arrangement of books and DVDs in alphabetical order, placing large items such as vacuum cleaners and plungers in sensible locations when we are done with them, and cleaning and putting away the dishes at least once a week. However, this all takes time and effort, which is anathema to our modern tendency to demand everything immediately.

The same is true - especially, painfully true - in analyzing neuroimaging data. Due to the sheer bulk of data collected during the course of a typical study, and the continual and irresponsible reproduction and multiplication of files, numbers, and images for each analysis, dealing with such a formidable and ever-increasing mountain of information can be paralyzing. The other day, for example, I was requested to run an analysis similar to another analysis I had done many months before; but with little idea of how I had done the first analysis in the first place, I was at a complete loss as to where to start. Foreseeing scenarios such as this, I had taken the precaution to place a trail of text files in each directory where I had performed a step or changed a file, in the hopes that it would enslicken my brain and guide me back into the mental grooves of where I had been previously. However, a quick scan of the document made my heart sink like an overkneaded loaf of whole wheat bread, as I realized deciphering my original intentions would baffle the most intrepid cryptologist. Take, for example, the following:


README.txt
---------------
20 July 2011
Input data into cell matrix of dimensions 30x142x73; covariates entered every other row, in order to account for working memory span, self-report measure of average anxiety levels after 7pm, and onset of latest menstrual cycle. Transposed matrix to factor out singular eigenvariates and determinants, then convolved with triple-gamma hemodynamic response function to filter out Nyquist frequency, followed by reverse deconvolution and arrangement of contrast images into pseudo-Pascal's Triangle. I need scissors! 61!


Deepening my confusion was a list of cross-references to handwritten notes I had scribbled and scrawled in the margins of notebooks and journals over the course of months and years, quite valuable back then, quite forgotten now, as leafing through the pages yielded no clue about when it was written (I am terrible at remembering to mark down dates), or what experiment the notes were about. But just as the flame of hope is about to be snuffed out forever, I usually espy a reference to a document located once again on my computer in a Dropbox folder, and I am filled with not so much pride or hope, as gladness at some end descried; which invariably sets me again on a wild goose chase through the Byzantine bowels of our server, which, if not precisely yielding any concrete result, at least makes me feel stressed and harried, and therefore productive.

Imagine my consternation then, during the latest round of reference-chasing, when I came to the point where I could go no further; where there was not even a chemical trace of where to go next, or what, exactly, I was looking for in the first place. My mind reeled; my spine turned to wax; my soul sank faster than the discharge of a fiberless diet. At wit's end, I cast about for a solution to my predicament, as I mentally listed my options. Ask for help? Out of the question; as an eminently and internationally respected neuroscience blogger, to admit ignorance or incompetence in anything would be a public relations disaster. Give up? As fond a subscriber as I am to the notion that discretion is the better part of valor, and as true a believer as any that there is nothing shameful, base, or humiliating about retreating, surrendering, or rearguard actions, this situation hardly seemed to merit my abject capitulation; and deep down I knew that overcoming this obstacle and chronicling my struggle would inspire my children and grandchildren to similar feats of bravery.

And so it was precisely at this moment, at the nadir of my existence, in the slough of despond, that, through either the random firing of two truculent interneurons in my hippocampus or through intervention by the divine hand of Providence, I had a sudden epiphany. The circumstances of my present situation echoed parallels to the gruesome detective stories I used to read as a child straight before bedtime, and I imagined myself standing in the shoes of a fleabitten detective attempting to piece together the origin and denouement of a puzzling murder, as in Gore by the Gallon or Severed Throats; and I therefore reasoned that, as every strangulation, bludgeoning, shooting, stabbing, poisoning, drowning, and asphyxiation leave traces of their author, so too must each analysis bear the fingerprint of its researcher. Straightaway I navigated to the directory of the analysis I was attempting to replicate, loaded the SPM.mat file into memory, displayed its contents, and quickly realized that I had no idea what any of it meant.

Thus, although the output of the SPM.mat file appears to me as hieroglyphs, I have faith that a more experienced user will know what they mean; and it still stands to reason that these files do contain everything that was done to create them, much as the strands of genetic information coursing through our bodies are virtual volumes of the history of the gonads and gametes from whence they came. I encourage the beginning neuroimager to be aware of this, as the designers of these software packages have proved far more prescient than we, and have installed safeguards to prevent us from the ill effects of our own miserable disorganization.