Abstract
Functional neuroimaging techniques have been widely used to probe the neural substrates of facial emotion processing in healthy people. However, findings are largely inconsistent across studies. Here, we introduce a new technique termed activation network mapping to examine whether heterogeneous functional magnetic resonance imaging findings localize to a common network for emotion processing. First, using the existing method of activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis, we showed that individual-brain-based reproducibility was low across studies. Second, using activation network mapping, we found that network-based reproducibility across these same studies was higher. Validation analysis indicated that the activation network mapping-localized network aligned with stimulation sites, structural abnormalities and brain lesions that disrupt facial emotion processing. Finally, we verified the generality of the activation network mapping technique by applying it to another cognitive process, that is, rumination. Activation network mapping may potentially be broadly applicable to localize brain networks of cognitive functions.
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Data availability
The normative connectome datasets are publicly available from the Human Connectome Project (HCP, https://www.humanconnectome.org) and the Genome Superstruct Project (GSP); The coordinate information for both the facial emotion processing and non-emotional processing, as well as the raw images for all figures in the main text and Supplementary Information, are publicly available at https://github.com/sailingpeng/2021_ActivationNetworkMapping.git.
Code availability
Custom codes for ANM analysis are publicly available on GitHub (https://github.com/sailingpeng/2021_ActivationNetworkMapping.git).
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 82172016 and 82021004 to G.G.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. We thank M.D. Fox for valuable comments on this paper.
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S.P. and G.G. conceived the analysis. S.P. designed the study. S.P. collected the data and performed the analyses. Y.J. preprocessed the HCP and GSP datasets. S.P. wrote the manuscript. S.P., G.G. and P.X. reviewed and edited the manuscript.
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Peng, S., Xu, P., Jiang, Y. et al. Activation network mapping for integration of heterogeneous fMRI findings. Nat Hum Behav 6, 1417–1429 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01371-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01371-1