scholarly journals Retrospective confidence judgments: Meta-analysis of fMRI studies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Martín-Luengo ◽  
Oksana Zinchenko ◽  
Aleksandra Dolgoarshinnaya1 ◽  
Alina Leminen

The confidence in our retrieved memories, i.e. retrospective confidence, is a metamemory process we perform daily. There is a wide variety of applied research focused on this metamemory judgements and a very diverse studies including a wide a range of clinical populations. Yet, the neural correlates that support its functioning are not well defined. We used the activation likelihood estimation method (ALE) on the 18 eligible studies in the functional magnetic resonance imaging literature available on the topic. The main analysis of confidence revealed concordant bilateral activation in the parahippocampal gyrus, left middle frontal gyrus, right amygdala and right caudate. These activations support the involvement of a frontoparietal network in metamemory evaluations, and the requirement of the medial temporal lobe. Activations for the exploratory high > low subtraction analysis were also noticed in the main analysis on retrospective confidence, whereas in our exploratory low > high subtraction analyses showed distinctive activations of the right precuneus, previously attributed to low confident evaluations.

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Wai Kan Yeung

: Food craving is a health issue for a considerable proportion of the general population. Medications have been introduced to alleviate the craving or reduce the appetite via a neuropharmacological approach. However, the underlying cerebral processing of the medications was largely unknown. This study aimed to meta-analyze existing neuroimaging findings. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus to identify relevant publications. Original studies that reported brain imaging findings using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were initially included. The reported coordinates of brain activation available from the studies were extracted and meta-analyzed with the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach via the software GingerALE. The overall analysis pooling data from 24 studies showed that the right claustrum and insula were the targeted sites of altered cerebral processing of food cues by the medications. Subgroup analysis pooling data from 11 studies showed that these sites had reduced activity level under medications compared to placebo. The location of this significant cluster partially overlapped with that attributable to affective value processing of food cue in a prior meta-analysis. No brain regions were found to have increased activity level by medications. These neural correlates may help explain the physiological effect of food consumption by anti-appetite and anti-obesity medications.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Hawes ◽  
H Moriah Sokolowski ◽  
Chuka Bosah Ononye ◽  
Daniel Ansari

Where and under what conditions do spatial and numerical skills converge and diverge in the brain? To address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis of brain regions associated with basic symbolic number processing, arithmetic, and mental rotation. We used Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) to construct quantitative meta-analytic maps synthesizing results from 86 neuroimaging papers (~ 30 studies/cognitive process). All three cognitive processes were found to activate bilateral parietal regions in and around the intraparietal sulcus (IPS); a finding consistent with shared processing accounts. Numerical and arithmetic processing were associated with overlap in the left angular gyrus, whereas mental rotation and arithmetic both showed activity in the middle frontal gyri. These patterns suggest regions of cortex potentially more specialized for symbolic number representation and domain-general mental manipulation, respectively. Additionally, arithmetic was associated with unique activity throughout the fronto-parietal network and mental rotation was associated with unique activity in the right superior parietal lobe. Overall, these results provide new insights into the intersection of numerical and spatial thought in the human brain.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (s1) ◽  
pp. 37-38
Author(s):  
Kathleen Miley ◽  
Fang Yu ◽  
Ian Ramsay ◽  
Sophia Vinogradov

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Development of interventions that improve social functioning (SF) in first episode psychosis (FEP) is hindered by a poor understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying SF deficits. This research aims to identify neural correlates of social functioning in FEP, and to evaluate whether this substrate is malleable in response to cognitive training. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: This is a secondary data-analysis of participants in an ongoing randomized clinical trial investigating whether 12 weeks of targeted cognitive training is neuroprotective in FEP, versus treatment as usual. Baseline and post-training assessments include a brain MRI, three measures of SF, and a neurocognitive battery. Healthy controls complete MRI only. Differences in cortical thickness (CTh) and gray matter volume (GMV) in regions of interest between FEP and controls will be determined with ANCOVA. Multiple linear regression will be used to determine the relationship between neural substrate and SF in FEP. Linear mixed models will be used to examine the relationship between change in CTh and GMV and change in SF. Data collection is ongoing for this study. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: In preliminary data including 12 FEP and 9 healthy controls, FEP demonstrated cortical loss in the right superior frontal cortex and the right isthmus-posterior cingulate. Greater cortical thickness in the posterior cingulate cortex was associated with better social functioning across multiple measures when controlling for global cognition. Gray matter volume in the parahippocampal gyrus was also associated with better social functioning. Preliminary results evaluating whether targeted cognitive training is neuroprotective in these regions of interest in a manner that is associated with improved social functioning will also be presented. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Preliminary results link the posterior cingulate and parahippocampal gyrus to SF in FEP. Further research will investigate the contribution of changes in these brain regions to improved SF. The identification of biological treatment targets for SF may lead to development and optimization of novel interventions to alleviate SF deficits in FEP.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (11) ◽  
pp. 1734-1748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Wertheim ◽  
Marco Ragni

It is a core cognitive ability of humans to represent and reason about relational information, such as “the train station is north of the hotel” or “Charles is richer than Jim.” However, the neural processes underlying the ability to draw conclusions about relations are still not sufficiently understood. Central open questions are as follows: (1) What are the neural correlates of relational reasoning? (2) Where can deductive and inductive reasoning be localized? (3) What is the impact of different informational types on cerebral activity? For that, we conducted a meta-analysis of 47 neuroimaging studies. We found activation of the frontoparietal network during both deductive and inductive reasoning, with additional activation in an extended network during inductive reasoning in the basal ganglia and the inferior parietal cortex. Analyses revealed a double dissociation concerning the lateral and medial Brodmann's area 6 during deductive and inductive reasoning, indicating differences in terms of processing verbal information in deductive and spatial information in inductive tasks. During semantic and symbolic tasks, the frontoparietal network was found active, whereas geometric tasks only elicited prefrontal activation, which can be explained by the reduced demand for the construction of a mental representation in geometric tasks. Our study provides new insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying relational reasoning and clarifies previous controversies concerning involved brain areas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (9) ◽  
pp. 855-864
Author(s):  
Elisa Dal Bò ◽  
Claudio Gentili ◽  
Cinzia Cecchetto

Abstract Across phyla, chemosignals are a widely used form of social communication and increasing evidence suggests that chemosensory communication is present also in humans. Chemosignals can transfer, via body odors, socially relevant information, such as specific information about identity or emotional states. However, findings on neural correlates of processing of body odors are divergent. The aims of this meta-analysis were to assess the brain areas involved in the perception of body odors (both neutral and emotional) and the specific activation patterns for the perception of neutral body odor (NBO) and emotional body odor (EBO). We conducted an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on 16 experiments (13 studies) examining brain activity during body odors processing. We found that the contrast EBO versus NBO resulted in significant convergence in the right middle frontal gyrus and the left cerebellum, whereas the pooled meta-analysis combining all the studies of human odors showed significant convergence in the right inferior frontal gyrus. No significant cluster was found for NBOs. However, our findings also highlight methodological heterogeneity across the existing literature. Further neuroimaging studies are needed to clarify and support the existing findings on neural correlates of processing of body odors.


1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare E. Mackay ◽  
Neil Roberts ◽  
Andrew R. Mayes ◽  
John J. Downes ◽  
Jonathan K. Foster ◽  
...  

A rigorous new methodology was applied to the study of structure function relationships in the living human brain. Face recognition memory (FRM) and other cognitive measures were made in 29 healthy young male subjects (mean age = 21.7 years) and related to volumetric measurements of their cerebral hemispheres and of structures in their medial temporal lobes, obtained using the Cavalieri method in combination with high resolution Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI. Greatest proportional variability in volumes was found for the lateral ventricles (57%) for the cerebral hemispheres (8%) in the mean volumes of the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, amygdala, caudate nucleus, temporal pole and temporal lobe on the right and left sides of the brain. The volumes of the right and left parahippocampal gyrus, temporal pole, temporal lobe, and left hippocampus were, prior to application of the Bonferroni correction to take account of 12 multiple comparisons, significantly correlated with the volume of the corresponding hemisphere (p< 0.05). The volumes of all structures were highly correlated (p< 0.0002 for all comparisons) between the two cerebral hemispheres. There were no positive relationships between structure volumes and FRM score. However, the volume of the right amygdala was, prior to application of the Bonferroni correction to take account of 38~multiple comparisons, found to be significantly smaller in the five most consistent high scorers compared to the five most consistent low scorers (t= 2.77,p= 0.025). The implications for possible relationships between healthy medial temporal lobe structures and memory are discussed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (10) ◽  
pp. 2015-2023 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Mothersill ◽  
G. Donohoe

BackgroundSocial environmental stress, including childhood abuse and deprivation, is associated with increased rates of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. However, the neural mechanisms mediating risk are not completely understood. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have reported effects of social environmental stress on a variety of brain regions, but interpretation of results is complicated by the variety of environmental risk factors examined and different methods employed.MethodWe examined brain regions consistently showing differences in blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response in individuals exposed to higher levels of environmental stress by performing a coordinate-based meta-analysis on 54 functional MRI studies using activation likelihood estimation (ALE), including an overall sample of 3044 participants. We performed separate ALE analyses on studies examining adults (mean age ⩾18 years) and children/adolescents (mean age <18 years) and a contrast analysis comparing the two types of study.ResultsAcross both adult and children/adolescent studies, ALE meta-analysis revealed several clusters in which differences in BOLD response were associated with social environmental stress across multiple studies. These clusters incorporated several brain regions, among which the right amygdala was most frequently implicated.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that a variety of social environmental stressors is associated with differences in the BOLD response of specific brain regions such as the right amygdala in both children/adolescents and adults. What remains unknown is whether these environmental stressors have differential effects on treatment response in these brain regions.


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