Meta-analyses are essential to summarize the results of the growing number of neuroimaging studies in psychiatry, neurology and allied disciplines. Image-based meta-analyses use full image information (i.e. the statistical parametric maps) and well-established statistics, but images are rarely available making them highly unfeasible. Peak-probability meta-analyses such as activation likelihood estimation (ALE) or multilevel kernel density analysis (MKDA) are more feasible as they only need reported peak coordinates. Signed-differences methods, such as signed differential mapping (SDM) build upon the positive features of existing peak-probability methods and enable meta-analyses of studies comparing patients with controls. In this paper we present a new version of SDM, named Effect Size SDM (ES-SDM), which enables the combination of statistical parametric maps and peak coordinates and uses well-established statistics. We validated the new method by comparing the results of an ES-SDM meta-analysis of studies on the brain response to fearful faces with the results of a pooled analysis of the original individual data. The results showed that ES-SDM is a valid and reliable coordinate-based method, whose performance might be additionally increased by including statistical parametric maps. We anticipate that ES-SDM will be a helpful tool for researchers in the fields of psychiatry, neurology and allied disciplines.

Our findings confirm previous reports of decreased ventral prefrontal activity during Stroop task performance in bipolar patients, and suggest a possible negative correlation between this and depression severity in bipolar patients. These findings further highlight the ventromedial PFC as a potential candidate for illness related dysfunction in bipolar disorder.

This study examined the effects of trait anxiety and age on performance of an emotional working memory task designed to investigate attentional control processes in the context of emotion. Participants included children, adolescents, and adults (8-30 years old). They performed the Emotional Face N-Back (EFNBACK) task, a modified n-back working memory task with four emotional distracter types (no picture, neutral, fearful, and happy) and two memory-load conditions (0-back and 2-back), and completed self-report trait anxiety measures. Results indicated that participants high in trait anxiety had slower reaction times on the fearful 2-back memory-load condition. A significant interaction with age indicated that this effect was greater in the younger participants. These findings suggest that anxious individuals, particularly younger ones, exhibit difficulty resisting interference from threat-related stimuli when greater attentional resources are being recruited.

Background Prior studies of adult post-traumatic stress disorder suggest abnormal functioning of prefrontal and limbic regions. Cumulative childhood and adult trauma exposures are major risk factors for developing adult PTSD, yet their contribution to neural dysfunction in PTSD remains poorly understood. This study aimed to examine the neural correlates of childhood and adult trauma exposure, and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) within a single model. Methods Medication-free male combat veterans (n=28, average 26.6 years) with a wide range of PTSS were recruited from the community between 2010 and 2011. Subjects completed an emotional face morphing task while undergoing fMRI. Clinical ratings included the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS), Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), and Combat Exposure Scale (CES). A priori regions were examined via multivariate voxelwise regression in SPM8, using depressive symptoms and IQ as covariates. Results In the angry condition, CAPS scores positively correlated with activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (BA10, z=3.51), hippocampus (z=3.47), insula (z=3.62), and, in earlier blocks, the amygdala. CES and CTQ positively correlated with activation in adjacent areas of the dorsal anterior cingulate (BA32, z=3.70; BA24, z=3.88, respectively). In the happy condition, CAPS, CTQ, and CES were not significantly correlated with activation patterns. Conclusions Dorsal anterior cingulate activation observed in prior studies of PTSD may be attributable to the cumulative effects of childhood and adult trauma exposure. In contrast, insula, hippocampus, and amygdala activation may be specific to PTSS. The specificity of these results to threat, and not positive stimuli, is consistent with abnormalities in threat processing associated with PTSS.