On The Search for Convergence of Functional Brain Patterns across Neuroimaging Studies: A Coordinate-Based Meta-Analysis Using Gibbs Point Process

Coordinate-based meta-analysis (CBMA) is a standard method for integrating brain functional patterns in neuroimaging studies. CBMA aims to identify convergency in activated brain regions across studies using coordinates of the peak activation (foci). Here, we aimed to introduce a new application of the Gibbs models for the meta-regression of the neuroimaging studies.

We used a dataset acquired from 31 studies by previous work. For each study as well as foci, study features such as SD duration and the average age were extracted. Two widely Gibbs models, Area-interaction and Geyer saturation were fitted on the foci. These models can quantify and test evidence for clusters in foci using an interaction parameter. We included study features in the models to identify their contribution to foci distribution and hence determine sources of the heterogeneity.

Our results revealed that latent study-specific features have a moderate contribution to the heterogeneity of foci distribution. However, the effect of age and SD duration was not significant (p<0.001). Additionally, the estimated interaction parameter was 1.34 (p<0.001) which denotes strong evidence of clusters in foci.

Overall, this study highlighted the role of the interaction parameter in CBMA. The results of this work suggest that Gibbs models can be considered as a promising tool for neuroimaging meta-analysis.