ReviewBiological psychiatry2018
The Multifaceted Role of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Emotion, Decision Making, Social Cognition, and Psychopathology.
Review in Biological psychiatry, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 490 papers, 6 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
490 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 936 citations in OpenAlex.
- The analysis of the prefrontal cortex and its facilitator role of violence: conclusions of a systematic review and meta-analysis based on neuroimaging results.Brain imaging and behavior · 2026Pooled it
- Sleep disorders and structural alterations in brain regions linked with motivation: a neuroimaging meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2026Pooled it
- The role of the amygdala in depression: a bibliometric analysis (2015-2024).Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Psychopathy and medial frontal cortex: A systematic review reveals predominantly null relationships.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Major depressive disorder associated alterations in the effective connectivity of the face processing network: a systematic review.Translational psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- High-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (HF-rTMS) on global cognitive function of elderly in mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2024Pooled it
- Different Changes in Brain Functional Networks Following 12-Week Psychostimulant Treatment in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Youth With and Without Familial Risk for Bipolar I Disorder.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2026Trial
- The effects of rTMS over orbitofrontal cortex on cognitive functions in first-episode schizophrenia.Psychological medicine · 2026Trial
- The effectiveness and neurobiological actions of memory bias modification: a randomized controlled trial.Psychological medicine · 2025Trial
- Effects of light therapy on amygdala connectivity and serotoninergic system in young adults with subthreshold depression.Dialogues in clinical neuroscience · 2025Trial
- Structural Brain Changes Are Linked to Clinical and Cognitive Outcomes in Anti-LGI1 Encephalitis.Neurology(R) neuroimmunology & neuroinflammation · 2026Observational
- Deep brain stimulation mechanisms in comorbid pain and emotional dysregulation from animal models.iScience · 2026Review
- Opposing sensitive period effects of early and late childhood maltreatment on corticolimbic responses in fear conditioning.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Neurovascular dysfunction in cerebral small vessel disease: impact on cognition and depression using arterial spin labeling and resting-state fMRI.Brain imaging and behavior · 2026Article
- Psychedelic 4-AcO-DMT attenuated looming-induced freezing behaviors by activating PrLMolecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Adolescent exposure to the psychedelic 25C-NBOMe in rats induces lasting competitive avoidance through disrupted hippocampal-prefrontal synchrony.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Examination of poverty trajectories and brain volume as predictors of adolescent depression.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2026Article
- Cell-type-specific genetic architecture reveals neuronal and immune contributions to neuropsychiatric disorders.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Neuroimmunology of Oral Cancer: Tumor Progression, Systemic Inflammation, and Neural Circuit Dysfunction from the Cerebellum to the Frontal Cortex.Molecular biology reports · 2026Review
- The therapeutic potential of COMT inhibition: cognition and beyond.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
430 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) has been implicated in a variety of social, cognitive, and affective functions that are commonly disrupted in mental illness. In this review, we summarize data from a diverse array of human and animal studies demonstrating that the vmPFC is a key node of cortical and subcortical networks that subserve at least three broad domains of psychological function linked to psychopathology. One track of research indicates that the vmPFC is critical for the representation of reward- and value-based decision making, through interactions with the ventral striatum and amygdala. A second track of research demonstrates that the vmPFC is critical for the generation and regulation of negative emotion, through its interactions with the amygdala, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, periaqueductal gray, hippocampus, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. A third track of research shows the importance of the vmPFC in multiple aspects of social cognition, such as facial emotion recognition, theory-of-mind ability, and processing self-relevant information, through its interactions with the posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, dorsomedial PFC, and amygdala. We then present meta-analytic data revealing distinct subregions within the vmPFC that correspond to each of these three functions, as well as the associations between these subregions and specific psychiatric disorders (depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, addiction, social anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). We conclude by describing several translational possibilities for clinical studies of vmPFC-based circuits, including neuropsychological assessment of transdiagnostic functions, anatomical targets for intervention, predictors of treatment response, markers of treatment efficacy, and subtyping within disorders.
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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.