TY - JOUR
T1 - Visual cortical regions show sufficient test-retest reliability while salience regions are unreliable during emotional face processing
AU - McDermott, Timothy J.
AU - Kirlic, Namik
AU - Akeman, Elisabeth
AU - Touthang, James
AU - Cosgrove, Kelly T.
AU - DeVille, Danielle C.
AU - Clausen, Ashley N.
AU - White, Evan J.
AU - Kuplicki, Rayus
AU - Aupperle, Robin L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding for this study was provided by the William K. Warren Foundation. Timothy McDermott, M.A., received support from the National Institute of Mental Health under Award Number F31MH122090 . Robin Aupperle, Ph.D., received support from the National Institute of Mental Health under Award Number K23MH108707 and National Institute of General Medical Sciences under Award Number P20GM121312 . Namik Kirlic, Ph.D., received support from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences under award Number P20GM121312 . Ashley Clausen, Ph.D. was supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Academic Affiliations Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Illness Research and Treatment, the Medical Research Service of the Durham VA Health Care System, and the Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic MIRECC. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States Government. The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2020/10/15
Y1 - 2020/10/15
N2 - Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies frequently use emotional face processing tasks to probe neural circuitry related to psychiatric disorders and treatments with an emphasis on regions within the salience network (e.g., amygdala). Findings across previous test-retest reliability studies of emotional face processing have shown high variability, potentially due to differences in data analytic approaches. The present study comprehensively examined the test-retest reliability of an emotional faces task utilizing multiple approaches to region of interest (ROI) analysis and by examining voxel-wise reliability across the entire brain for both neural activation and functional connectivity. Analyses included 42 healthy adult participants who completed an fMRI scan concurrent with an emotional faces task on two separate days with an average of 25.52 days between scans. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated for the ‘FACES-SHAPES’ and ‘FACES’ (compared to implicit baseline) contrasts across the following: anatomical ROIs identified from a publicly available brain atlas (i.e., Brainnetome), functional ROIs consisting of 5-mm spheres centered on peak voxels from a publicly available meta-analytic database (i.e., Neurosynth), and whole-brain, voxel-wise analysis. Whole-brain, voxel-wise analyses of functional connectivity were also conducted using both anatomical and functional seed ROIs. While group-averaged neural activation maps were consistent across time, only one anatomical ROI and two functional ROIs showed good or excellent individual-level reliability for neural activation. The anatomical ROI was the right medioventral fusiform gyrus for the FACES contrast (ICC = 0.60). The functional ROIs were the left and the right fusiform face area (FFA) for both FACES-SHAPES and FACES (Left FFA ICCs = 0.69 & 0.79; Right FFA ICCs = 0.68 & 0.66). Poor reliability (ICCs < 0.4) was identified for almost all other anatomical and functional ROIs, with some exceptions showing fair reliability (ICCs = 0.4–0.59). Whole-brain voxel-wise analysis of neural activation identified voxels with good (ICCs = 0.6–0.74) to excellent reliability (ICCs > 0.75) that were primarily located in visual cortex, with several clusters in bilateral dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Whole-brain voxel-wise analyses of functional connectivity for amygdala and fusiform gyrus identified very few voxels with good to excellent reliability using both anatomical and functional seed ROIs. Exceptions included clusters in right cerebellum and right DLPFC that showed reliable connectivity with left amygdala (ICCs > 0.6). In conclusion, results indicate that visual cortical regions demonstrate good reliability at the individual level for neural activation, but reliability is generally poor for salience regions often focused on within psychiatric research (e.g., amygdala). Given these findings, future clinical neuroimaging studies using emotional faces tasks to examine individual differences might instead focus on visual regions and their role in psychiatric disorders.
AB - Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies frequently use emotional face processing tasks to probe neural circuitry related to psychiatric disorders and treatments with an emphasis on regions within the salience network (e.g., amygdala). Findings across previous test-retest reliability studies of emotional face processing have shown high variability, potentially due to differences in data analytic approaches. The present study comprehensively examined the test-retest reliability of an emotional faces task utilizing multiple approaches to region of interest (ROI) analysis and by examining voxel-wise reliability across the entire brain for both neural activation and functional connectivity. Analyses included 42 healthy adult participants who completed an fMRI scan concurrent with an emotional faces task on two separate days with an average of 25.52 days between scans. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated for the ‘FACES-SHAPES’ and ‘FACES’ (compared to implicit baseline) contrasts across the following: anatomical ROIs identified from a publicly available brain atlas (i.e., Brainnetome), functional ROIs consisting of 5-mm spheres centered on peak voxels from a publicly available meta-analytic database (i.e., Neurosynth), and whole-brain, voxel-wise analysis. Whole-brain, voxel-wise analyses of functional connectivity were also conducted using both anatomical and functional seed ROIs. While group-averaged neural activation maps were consistent across time, only one anatomical ROI and two functional ROIs showed good or excellent individual-level reliability for neural activation. The anatomical ROI was the right medioventral fusiform gyrus for the FACES contrast (ICC = 0.60). The functional ROIs were the left and the right fusiform face area (FFA) for both FACES-SHAPES and FACES (Left FFA ICCs = 0.69 & 0.79; Right FFA ICCs = 0.68 & 0.66). Poor reliability (ICCs < 0.4) was identified for almost all other anatomical and functional ROIs, with some exceptions showing fair reliability (ICCs = 0.4–0.59). Whole-brain voxel-wise analysis of neural activation identified voxels with good (ICCs = 0.6–0.74) to excellent reliability (ICCs > 0.75) that were primarily located in visual cortex, with several clusters in bilateral dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Whole-brain voxel-wise analyses of functional connectivity for amygdala and fusiform gyrus identified very few voxels with good to excellent reliability using both anatomical and functional seed ROIs. Exceptions included clusters in right cerebellum and right DLPFC that showed reliable connectivity with left amygdala (ICCs > 0.6). In conclusion, results indicate that visual cortical regions demonstrate good reliability at the individual level for neural activation, but reliability is generally poor for salience regions often focused on within psychiatric research (e.g., amygdala). Given these findings, future clinical neuroimaging studies using emotional faces tasks to examine individual differences might instead focus on visual regions and their role in psychiatric disorders.
KW - Affect
KW - Connectivity
KW - Individual differences
KW - Intraclass correlation
KW - Replication
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087025124&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117077
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117077
M3 - Article
C2 - 32574806
AN - SCOPUS:85087025124
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 220
JO - NeuroImage
JF - NeuroImage
M1 - 117077
ER -