The Influence of Study-Level Inference Models and Study Set Size on Coordinate-Based fMRI Meta-Analyses

TY - JOUR

T1 - The Influence of Study-Level Inference Models and Study Set Size on Coordinate-Based fMRI Meta-Analyses

AU - Bossier, Han

AU - Seurinck, Ruth

AU - Kühn, Simone

AU - Banaschewski, Tobias

AU - Barker, Gareth J

AU - Bokde, Arun L W

AU - Martinot, Jean-Luc

AU - Lemaitre, Herve

AU - Paus, Tomáš

AU - Millenet, Sabina

AU - Moerkerke, Beatrijs

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - Given the increasing amount of neuroimaging studies, there is a growing need to summarize published results. Coordinate-based meta-analyses use the locations of statistically significant local maxima with possibly the associated effect sizes to aggregate studies. In this paper, we investigate the influence of key characteristics of a coordinate-based meta-analysis on (1) the balance between false and true positives and (2) the activation reliability of the outcome from a coordinate-based meta-analysis. More particularly, we consider the influence of the chosen group level model at the study level [fixed effects, ordinary least squares (OLS), or mixed effects models], the type of coordinate-based meta-analysis [Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) that only uses peak locations, fixed effects, and random effects meta-analysis that take into account both peak location and height] and the amount of studies included in the analysis (from 10 to 35). To do this, we apply a resampling scheme on a large dataset (N = 1,400) to create a test condition and compare this with an independent evaluation condition. The test condition corresponds to subsampling participants into studies and combine these using meta-analyses. The evaluation condition corresponds to a high-powered group analysis. We observe the best performance when using mixed effects models in individual studies combined with a random effects meta-analysis. Moreover the performance increases with the number of studies included in the meta-analysis. When peak height is not taken into consideration, we show that the popular ALE procedure is a good alternative in terms of the balance between type I and II errors. However, it requires more studies compared to other procedures in terms of activation reliability. Finally, we discuss the differences, interpretations, and limitations of our results.

AB - Given the increasing amount of neuroimaging studies, there is a growing need to summarize published results. Coordinate-based meta-analyses use the locations of statistically significant local maxima with possibly the associated effect sizes to aggregate studies. In this paper, we investigate the influence of key characteristics of a coordinate-based meta-analysis on (1) the balance between false and true positives and (2) the activation reliability of the outcome from a coordinate-based meta-analysis. More particularly, we consider the influence of the chosen group level model at the study level [fixed effects, ordinary least squares (OLS), or mixed effects models], the type of coordinate-based meta-analysis [Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) that only uses peak locations, fixed effects, and random effects meta-analysis that take into account both peak location and height] and the amount of studies included in the analysis (from 10 to 35). To do this, we apply a resampling scheme on a large dataset (N = 1,400) to create a test condition and compare this with an independent evaluation condition. The test condition corresponds to subsampling participants into studies and combine these using meta-analyses. The evaluation condition corresponds to a high-powered group analysis. We observe the best performance when using mixed effects models in individual studies combined with a random effects meta-analysis. Moreover the performance increases with the number of studies included in the meta-analysis. When peak height is not taken into consideration, we show that the popular ALE procedure is a good alternative in terms of the balance between type I and II errors. However, it requires more studies compared to other procedures in terms of activation reliability. Finally, we discuss the differences, interpretations, and limitations of our results.

KW - Journal Article

U2 - 10.3389/fnins.2017.00745

DO - 10.3389/fnins.2017.00745

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 29403344

VL - 11

SP - 745

JO - FRONT NEUROSCI-SWITZ

JF - FRONT NEUROSCI-SWITZ

SN - 1662-453X

ER -