Pursuit of biomarkers of brain diseases: Beyond cohort comparisons

arXiv:2509.10547v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Despite the diversity and volume of brain data acquired and advanced AI-based algorithms to analyze them, brain features are rarely used in clinics for diagnosis and prognosis. Here we argue that the field continues to rely on cohort comparisons to seek biomarkers, despite the well-established degeneracy of brain features. Using a thought experiment (Brain Swap), we show that more data and more powerful algorithms will not be sufficient t