ArticleNeuroImage2017
Unreliability of putative fMRI biomarkers during emotional face processing.
Article in NeuroImage, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review of studies that used NIRS to measure neural activation during emotion processing in healthy individuals.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- What Is the Test-Retest Reliability of Common Task-Functional MRI Measures? New Empirical Evidence and a Meta-Analysis.Psychological science · 2020Pooled it
- Amygdala activity after subchronic escitalopram administration in healthy volunteers: A pharmaco-functional magnetic resonance imaging study.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2024Trial
- Neuroimaging correlates and predictors of response to repeated-dose intravenous ketamine in PTSD: preliminary evidence.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2021Trial
- Neural predictors of treatment response to brain stimulation and psychological therapy in depression: a double-blind randomized controlled trial.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Large-Vessel Venous Signal Confounds Apparent Amygdala Activation in BOLD fMRI.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Investigating Neural Correlates of Emotional Regulation as a Function of Age, Race, and Socioeconomic Status.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Co-citation analysis of molecular imaging in neuropsychiatric disorders: integrating perspectives from radiology, neuroscience, and psychiatry.Psychoradiology · 2025Article
- Functional brain connectivity changes associated with day-to-day fluctuations in affective states.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Network and state specificity in connectivity-based predictions of individual behavior.Human brain mapping · 2024Article
- Free-viewing gaze patterns reveal a mood-congruency bias in MDD during an affective fMRI/eye-tracking task.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2024Observational
- Article
- Amygdala fMRI-A Critical Appraisal of the Extant Literature.Neuroscience insights · 2024Review
- Network and State Specificity in Connectivity-Based Predictions of Individual Behavior.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Pattern classification based on the amygdala does not predict an individual's response to emotional stimuli.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Anxiety Shapes Amygdala-Prefrontal Dynamics During Movie Watching.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2023Article
- Functional neuroimaging of resilience to trauma: convergent evidence and challenges for future research.Psychological medicine · 2023Review
- The Role of fMRI in Drug Development: An Update.Advances in neurobiology · 2023Article
- Reliability of Decision-Making and Reinforcement Learning Computational Parameters.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2023Article
- Exaggerated amygdala response to threat and association with immune hyperactivity in depression.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
There is considerable need to develop tailored approaches to psychiatric treatment. Numerous researchers have proposed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) biomarkers to predict therapeutic response, in particular by measuring task-evoked subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC) and amygdala activation in mood and anxiety disorders. Translating this to the clinic relies on the assumption that blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) responses in these regions are stable within individuals. To test this assumption, we scanned a group of 29 volunteers twice (mean test-retest interval=14.3 days) and calculated the within-subject reliability of the amplitude of the amygdalae and sgACC BOLD responses to emotional faces using three paradigms: emotion identification; emotion matching; and gender classification. We also calculated the reliability of activation in a control region, the right fusiform face area (FFA). All three tasks elicited robust group activations in the amygdalae and sgACC (which changed little on average over scanning sessions), but within-subject reliability was surprisingly low, despite excellent reliability in the control right FFA region. Our findings demonstrate low statistical reliability of two important putative treatment biomarkers in mood and anxiety disorders.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.