Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, United States.
Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, United States.
Neuroimage. 2022 May 15;252:119046. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119046. Epub 2022 Mar 1.
Trait stability of measures is an essential requirement for individual differences research. Functional MRI has been increasingly used in studies that rely on the assumption of trait stability, such as attempts to relate task related brain activation to individual differences in behavior and psychopathology. However, recent research using adult samples has questioned the trait stability of task-fMRI measures, as assessed by test-retest correlations. To date, little is known about trait stability of task fMRI in children. Here, we examined within-session reliability and long-term stability of individual differences in task-fMRI measures using fMRI measures of brain activation provided by the adolescent brain cognitive development (ABCD) Study Release v4.0 as an individual's average regional activity, using its tasks focused on reward processing, response inhibition, and working memory. We also evaluated the effects of factors potentially affecting reliability and stability. Reliability and stability (quantified as the ratio of non-scanner related stable variance to all variances) was poor in virtually all brain regions, with an average value of 0.088 and 0.072 for short term (within-session) reliability and long-term (between-session) stability, respectively, in regions of interest (ROIs) historically-recruited by the tasks. Only one reliability or stability value in ROIs exceeded the 'poor' cut-off of 0.4, and in fact rarely exceeded 0.2 (only 4.9%). Motion had a pronounced effect on estimated reliability/stability, with the lowest motion quartile of participants having a mean reliability/stability 2.5 times higher (albeit still 'poor') than the highest motion quartile. Poor reliability and stability of task-fMRI, particularly in children, diminishes potential utility of fMRI data due to a drastic reduction of effect sizes and, consequently, statistical power for the detection of brain-behavior associations. This essential issue urgently needs to be addressed through optimization of task design, scanning parameters, data acquisition protocols, preprocessing pipelines, and data denoising methods.
特质稳定性是个体差异研究的基本要求。功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 已越来越多地用于依赖特质稳定性假设的研究，例如尝试将与任务相关的大脑激活与行为和精神病理学的个体差异相关联。然而，最近使用成人样本的研究质疑了任务 fMRI 测量的特质稳定性，这可以通过测试-再测试相关性来评估。迄今为止，对于儿童任务 fMRI 的特质稳定性知之甚少。在这里，我们使用青少年大脑认知发展 (ABCD) 研究发布版 4.0 的 fMRI 脑激活测量值作为个体的平均区域活动，使用其专注于奖励处理、反应抑制和工作记忆的任务，检查了任务 fMRI 测量值的个体差异的会话内可靠性和长期稳定性。我们还评估了可能影响可靠性和稳定性的因素的影响。几乎所有脑区的可靠性和稳定性（以与扫描仪无关的稳定方差与所有方差的比值来量化）都很差，在感兴趣区（ROI）中，短期（会话内）可靠性和长期（会话间）稳定性的平均值分别为 0.088 和 0.072。在历史上由任务招募的 ROI 中，只有一个可靠性或稳定性值超过了“差”的截止值 0.4，实际上很少超过 0.2（只有 4.9%）。运动对估计的可靠性/稳定性有显著影响，参与者的最低运动四分位数的平均可靠性/稳定性比最高运动四分位数高 2.5 倍（尽管仍然“差”）。任务 fMRI 的可靠性和稳定性差，特别是在儿童中，由于效应大小急剧减小，因此 fMRI 数据的潜在效用降低，从而降低了检测大脑-行为关联的统计能力。这个重要问题需要通过优化任务设计、扫描参数、数据采集协议、预处理管道和数据去噪方法来解决。
