Naturalistic paradigms in fMRI research: An ALE meta-analysis
Creators: name: Bottenhorn, Katherine L
name: Sutherland, Matthew T.
name: Laird, Angela R.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: neuroimaging meta-analysis
naturalistic fmri

description: The ability to present natural and interactive audiovisual stimuli is changing how some researchers approach experimental design in fMRI. The use of video games, film clips, and virtual reality (VR) environments has brought increased ecological validity, allowing researchers to study brain activity during tasks more representative of real-life scenarios [1, 2]. Although these three types of stimuli are treated relatively independently in the literature, additional insight may be provided their collective evaluation. Here, we assessed the activation patterns underlying complex, realistic human behavior using a coordinate-based meta-analytic approach. Though distinct, video games, film clips, and VR environments require integrating dynamic streams of information to form appropriate responses in real time. We hypothesized that these task domains rely heavily on cognitive maintenance and spatiotemporal processing associated with the demands of real-world information processing.We performed coordinate-based meta-analysis using the activation likelihood estimate (ALE) algorithm [3,4], focusing on three task domains: video games, film clips, and VR environments. Literature search was performed for studies of healthy, adult participants; peak activation coordinates were extracted and converted to Talairach space. ALE was applied to generate a whole-brain statistical map of convergent activations, which was tested against a null distribution over 1000 permutations (<em>p<sub>voxel</sub>&lt;0.001; p<sub>cluster</sub>&lt;0.01</em>). We performed three additional ALE meta-analyses within the contributing task domains to further elucidate the task-specific patterns. Lastly, we performed functional decoding of the resultant ALE clusters in NeuroSynth using the reverse inference approach by computing the conditional probability of a term being used in a study conditional on activation being present at a given brain location [5,6]. ALE meta-analysis of the three domains of naturalistic paradigms (31 contrasts) revealed clusters in the middle and superior frontal gyri, as well as a cluster in the middle occipital gyrus, representing consistent recruitment of these regions collectively across stimulus categories. NeuroSynth reverse inference was performed on each of these three regions. For the middle frontal cluster, NeuroSynth terms of “(dorsal) premotor”, “movements”, and “eye fields” were observed. For the superior middle cluster, “load”, “working memory”, “visuospatial”, and “navigation” were observed. For the middle occipital cluster, “objects”, “visual”, “environments”, “scene”, “remembered”, and “spatial” were observed. We performed three additional ALE meta-analyses of the contributing task domains: video games (11 contrasts), film clips (8 contrasts), and VR environments (12 contrasts). While low in power, these analyses confirmed the domain specificity of each task: postcentral gyrus, insula, putamen, and posterior parietal cortex for video games (reflecting motor, reward, and spatial processing); parahippocampus, superior temporal sulcus, fusiform gyrus for film clips (reflecting facial stimuli in tasks with a strong social context); and posterior cingulate, posterior parietal, and parahippocampus for VR (reflecting spatial memory processing during navigation tasks). Our meta-analysis of naturalistic paradigms in fMRI included three task domains: video games, film clips, and VR environments. Contrasts from these domains consistently identified dorsal premotor cortex and extrastriate cortex. Functional decoding using NeuroSynth provided support for our hypothesis that immersive audiovisual stimulus environments consistently recruit regions strongly associated with spatiotemporal processing, memory, visual attention, and motor planning. Our results suggest that engaging and responding to complex, naturalistic stimuli requires the integration of timing and visuospatial synthesis demands, which is necessary to guide behavior in dynamic, real-world settings. <strong>References</strong> Zaki, J., &amp; Ochsner, K. (2009). The Need for a Cognitive Neuroscience of Naturalistic Social Cognition. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167(1), 16–30. Maguire, E. (2012). Studying the freely-behaving brain with fMRI. NeuroImage, 62(2), 1170–1176. Eickhoff SB, Laird AR, Grefkes C, Wang LE, Zilles K, Fox PT. Coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of neuroimaging data: A random-effects approach based on empirical estimates of spatial uncertainty. Hum Brain Mapp 30, 2907-2926, 2009. Eickhoff SB, Bzdok D, Laird AR, Kurth F, Fox PT. Activation likelihood estimation revisited. Neuroimage 59, 2349-2361, 2012. Yarkoni, T., Poldrack, R. A., Nichols, T. E., Van Essen, D. C., &amp; Wager, T. D. (2011). Large-scale automated synthesis of human functional neuroimaging data. Nature Methods, 8(8), 665–70.