Figure 5. Linear models performed on par with nonlinear machine learning models in neuroimaging-based phenotype prediction.
We found no consistent evidence of exploitable predictive nonlinear structure in neuroimaging data. Only for DWI-based prediction of sex and age at large (>16,000) training sample sizes did nonlinear models marginally outperform their linear counterparts. Pictured are results for linear and RBF-kernelized nonlinear ridge regression. For other nonlinear machine learning models, see the supplemental information. Error bars indicate SEM.