{"doi":"10.1162/imag_a_00358","title":"Consistent activation differences versus differences in consistent activation: Evaluating meta-analytic contrasts","abstract":"Meta-analytic contrasts are a promising aspect of coordinate-based meta-analyses in neuroimaging research as they facilitate the statistical comparison of two meta-analytic results. They have been used for a multitude of comparisons, such as task conditions, cognitive processes, and groups. However, it remains to be tested how the results of meta-analytic contrasts relate to those of classic meta-analyses and vice versa. Here, we present a comprehensive empirical investigation of this issue using four datasets from different cognitive domains: working memory, working memory load, cognitive interference processing, and emotional face processing. For all four datasets, we compared the results of a standard meta-analysis across prototypical contrasts (condition A > condition B) reported in individual experiments with those of a contrast between two individual meta-analyses of the same conditions (meta-analysis condition A > meta-analysis condition B). In the meta-analytic contrasts, similar brain regions as in the standard meta-analysis were found but with relatively distinct spatial activation patterns. Additionally, fewer regions were revealed in the meta-analytic contrasts, especially in areas where the conditions spatially overlapped. This can be ascribed to the loss of information on the strength of activations in meta-analytic contrasts, across which standard meta-analysis summarize. In one dataset, additional regions were found in the meta-analytic contrast, potentially due to task effects. Our results demonstrate that meta-analytic contrasts can yield similar results to standard meta-analyses but are sparser. This confirms the overall validity, but also limited ability to capture all regions found in standard meta-analyses. Notable differences observed in some cases indicate that such contrasts cannot be taken as an easy substitute for classic meta-analyses of experiment-level contrasts, warranting further research into the boundary conditions for agreement.","journal":"Imaging Neuroscience","year":2024,"id":461524,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9504,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":106595,"name":"Edna C. Cieslik","orcid":"0000-0001-5491-5837","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":866993,"name":"Lennart Frahm","orcid":"0000-0001-8907-883X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106641,"name":"Felix Hoffstaedter","orcid":"0000-0001-7163-3110","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106615,"name":"Simon B. Eickhoff","orcid":"0000-0001-6363-2759","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1036954,"name":"Robert Langner","orcid":"0000-0002-3237-001X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1169099,"name":"Veronika Müller","orcid":"0000-0003-4382-3181","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1036953,"name":"V. Küppers","orcid":"0000-0001-9648-0253","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":97,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:04:16.410510Z","pmid":"40800475","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}