APA Dictionary of Psychology

a method of analyzing magnetic resonance imaging scans to identify differences in brain anatomy among groups of individuals (e.g., those with and without Parkinson’s disease), using values on three-dimensional grids (voxels) and statistical mapping. Due to normal variation in brains, using VBM in single cases or to compare the brains only of healthy people is likely to result in high false-positive rates (i.e., high rates of brains being found to have an anomaly that in fact is not abnormal).