SPM99 documentation and links

Many fMRI labs in the world use SPM (which stands for Statistical Parametric Mapping). It runs under Matlab and, because Matlab is interpreted and not compiled computing, runs very slow. It is not recommended that you realign (use AFNI for that) or normalize with SPM - these operations will literally take hours to complete. SPM normalizes to a ``standard brain'' as defined by folks at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI). All the other software packages normalize to Talairach space.

To start up SPM, first start up matlab by typing matlab5 at the Unix command prompt. Then start up SPM by typing spm (or spm fmri) at the matlab command prompt.

Links:

  1. Chapters from the ``SPM course'' in pdf format. A very good mathematical overview of the principles behind SPM but almost no explaination about how to use SPM itself. The SPM course has some lecture slides associated with it (also pdf format). The slides have limited pedagogical value but the course note provide a totally excellent introduction to the statistical General Linear Model (GLM). I don't like the software but I highly recommend reading the SPM course material.
  2. A recently released SPM manual has useful information on how to use the SPM software.
  3. SPM home page.
  4. SPM How-To's.