Practical recommendations to conduct a neuroimaging meta-analysis for neuropsychiatric disorders
Open accessAbstract
Over the past decades, neuroimaging has become widely used to investigate structural and functional brain abnormality in neuropsychiatric disorders. The results of individual neuroimaging studies, however, are frequently inconsistent due to small and heterogeneous samples, analytical flexibility, and publication bias toward positive findings. To consolidate the emergent findings toward clinically useful insight, meta‐analyses have been developed to integrate the results of studies and identify areas that are consistently involved in pathophysiology of particular neuropsychiatric disorders. However, it should be considered that the results of meta‐analyses could also be divergent due to heterogeneity in search strategy, selection criteria, imaging modalities, behavioral tasks, number of experiments, data organization methods, and statistical analysis with different multiple comparison thresholds. Following an introduction to the problem and the concepts of quantitative summaries of neuroimaging findings, we propose practical recommendations for clinicians and researchers for conducting transparent and methodologically sound neuroimaging meta‐analyses. This should help to consolidate the search for convergent regional brain abnormality in neuropsychiatric disorders.
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This review adheres to PRISMA guidelines and follows best-practice recommendations for coordinate-based meta-analyses.
“This review adheres to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines (Page et al., 2021) and follows the best-practice recommendations for conducting coordinate-based meta-analyses (Müller et al., 2018, Tahmasian et al., 2019).”
From Inhibitory control in obsessive compulsive disorder: a systematic review and activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies (2022) · cites this paper as Tahmasian et al., 2019
Following current best-practice guidelines, we assessed significance using a voxel-level threshold and a cluster-level familywise error-corrected threshold, and performed ALE meta-analyses only when at least 17 experiments reported activation foci for a contrast.
“Following current best-practice guidelines, we assessed the significance of convergence of activation foci using a voxel-level threshold of and a cluster-level familywise error-corrected threshold of , and performed ALE meta-analyses only when at least 17 experiments reported activation foci for a contrast (Eickhoff et al., 2016, Tahmasian et al., 2019).”
From Inhibitory control in obsessive compulsive disorder: a systematic review and activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies (2022) · cites this paper as Tahmasian et al., 2019
The sample of 35 experiments is considered adequate by present guidelines for neuroimaging meta-analyses.
“Notably, this null-finding occurred in a well-powered meta-analysis: the sample of 35 experiments is considered adequate by present guidelines for neuroimaging meta-analyses (Müller et al., 2018, Tahmasian et al., 2019) and gave us more than 80 % power to detect a convergence of activation differences in areas that were identified in just 7 (20 %) of the experiments (Eickhoff et al., 2016)”
From Inhibitory control in obsessive compulsive disorder: a systematic review and activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies (2022) · cites this paper as Tahmasian et al., 2019
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References 117 · Cited by 126
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Higgins JPT, Green S, Cochrane C, Wiley-Blackwell Online B, & Wiley Online L. (2008). Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
- Authors
- Tahmasian, M., Sepehry, A. A., Samea, F., Khodadadifar, T., Soltaninejad, Z., Javaheripour, N., Khazaie, H., Zarei, M., Eickhoff, S. B., & Eickhoff, C. R.
- Affiliations
- Shahid Beheshti University (IR)
- Clinical and Counselling Psychology Program Adler University Vancouver British Columbia Canada
- Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IR)
- Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (IR)
- Forschungszentrum Jülich (DE)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Human Brain Mapping
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2019-08-04
- Volume
- 40
- Issue
- 17
- Pages
- 5142-5154
- ISSN
- 1065-9471 (ISSN-L)
- 1097-0193
- PMC
- PMC6865620
- OpenAlex
- W2964782455
- Cited by
- 126
- References
- 117
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 1.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Human Brain Mapping (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01‐MH074457)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (EI 816/11‐1)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- neuroimaging meta-analysis, neuropsychiatric disorders, methodological recommendations, publication bias, multiple testing correction, structural brain abnormalities, functional brain abnormalities
- MeSH terms
- Systematic Reviews as Topic, Mental Disorders, Brain, Humans, Research Design, Meta-Analysis as Topic, Neuroimaging
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