The causal journey: from maps to mechanisms and digital twins

Over three decades, statistical parametric mapping has transformed neuroimaging from descriptive mapping to causal inference, placing generative models at the core of causal explanations for brain function. It inspired to a large degree The Virtual Brain, which builds subject-specific digital twins from multimodal data, enabling brain simulations and exploration. Both frameworks converge at parameter estimation, where model and data meet, providing the mathematical manifestation of cause-effect in pathophysiology.