The challenge of functional magnetic resonance imaging

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the human brain in action presents large statistical and computational challenges. Here we describe those cha llenges and provide references to a number of other papers where detailed m ethods developed to meet them are reported. The first seven sections of thi s paper were written in 1995 when our work was in its infancy. The last fou r sections were written more recently, to update the earlier sections and t o show the directions we have gone and the directions we intend to go.