The effect of seed location on functional connectivity: evidence from an image-based meta-analysis

Meng-Ting Li; Jia-Wei Sun; Lin-Lin Zhan; Collins Opoku Antwi; Ya-Ting Lv; Xi-Ze Jia; Jun Ren

doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1120741

The effect of seed location on functional connectivity: evidence from an image-based meta-analysis

Front Neurosci. 2023 May 31:17:1120741. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2023.1120741. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Meng-Ting Li¹, Jia-Wei Sun², Lin-Lin Zhan³, Collins Opoku Antwi¹, Ya-Ting Lv⁴, Xi-Ze Jia¹, Jun Ren¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China.
² Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Neuro, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
³ School of Western Studies, Heilongjiang University, Harbin, China.
⁴ Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, The Affiliated Hospital, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

Introduction: Default mode network (DMN) is the most involved network in the study of brain development and brain diseases. Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) is the most used method to study DMN, but different studies are inconsistent in the selection of seed. To evaluate the effect of different seed selection on rsFC, we conducted an image-based meta-analysis (IBMA).

Methods: We identified 59 coordinates of seed regions of interest (ROIs) within the default mode network (DMN) from 11 studies (retrieved from Web of Science and Pubmed) to calculate the functional connectivity; then, the uncorrected t maps were obtained from the statistical analyses. The IBMA was performed with the t maps.

Results: We demonstrate that the overlap of meta-analytic maps across different seeds' ROIs within DMN is relatively low, which cautions us to be cautious with seeds' selection.

Discussion: Future studies using the seed-based functional connectivity method should take the reproducibility of different seeds into account. The choice of seed may significantly affect the connectivity results.

Keywords: default mode network; image-based meta-analysis; reproducibility; seed selection; seed-based functional connectivity.