Thanks for answering Mark! I tried with the coding of the interaction you suggested:
> tfac<-with(vlt,interaction(Lobe,Tissue,drop=T)) > mod<-lme(Volume~Sex*Lobe*Tissue,random=~1|Subject/tfac,data=vlt) But is it normal that the DF are 2303? DF is 2303 even for the estimate of LobeO that has only 662 values (331 for Tissue=white and 331 for Tissue=grey). I'm not sure either that Sex, Lobe and Tissue are correctly handled.... why are there different estimates called Sex:LobeO, Sex:LobeP, etc, and not just Sex:Lobe as with aov()?. Why there's Tissuew, but not Sex1, for example? Thanks again! roberto ps1. How would you code this with lmer()? ps2. this is part of the output of mod<-lme: > summary(mod) Linear mixed-effects model fit by REML Data: vlt AIC BIC logLik 57528.35 57639.98 -28745.17 Random effects: Formula: ~1 | Subject (Intercept) StdDev: 11294.65 Formula: ~1 | tfac %in% Subject (Intercept) Residual StdDev: 10569.03 4587.472 Fixed effects: Volume ~ Sex * Lobe * Tissue Value Std.Error DF t-value p-value (Intercept) 245224.61 1511.124 2303 162.27963 0.0000 Sex 2800.01 1866.312 329 1.50029 0.1345 LobeO -180794.83 1526.084 2303 -118.46975 0.0000 LobeP -131609.27 1526.084 2303 -86.23984 0.0000 LobeT -73189.97 1526.084 2303 -47.95932 0.0000 Tissuew -72461.05 1526.084 2303 -47.48168 0.0000 Sex:LobeO -663.27 1884.789 2303 -0.35191 0.7249 Sex:LobeP -2146.08 1884.789 2303 -1.13863 0.2550 Sex:LobeT 1379.49 1884.789 2303 0.73191 0.4643 Sex:Tissuew 5387.65 1884.789 2303 2.85849 0.0043 LobeO:Tissuew 43296.99 2158.209 2303 20.06154 0.0000 LobeP:Tissuew 50952.21 2158.209 2303 23.60856 0.0000 LobeT:Tissuew -15959.31 2158.209 2303 -7.39470 0.0000 Sex:LobeO:Tissuew -5228.66 2665.494 2303 -1.96161 0.0499 Sex:LobeP:Tissuew -1482.83 2665.494 2303 -0.55631 0.5781 Sex:LobeT:Tissuew -6037.49 2665.494 2303 -2.26506 0.0236 ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.