Abstract
Task‐based functional neuroimaging methods are increasingly being used to identify biomarkers of treatment response in psychiatric disorders. To facilitate meaningful interpretation of neural correlates of tasks and their potential changes with treatment over time, understanding the reliability of the blood‐oxygen‐level dependent (BOLD) signal of such tasks is essential. We assessed test–retest reliability of an emotional conflict task in healthy participants collected as part of the Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression. Data for 36 participants, scanned at three time points (weeks 0, 2, and 8) were analyzed, and intra‐class correlation coefficients (ICC) were used to quantify reliability. We observed moderate reliability (median ICC values between 0.5 and 0.6), within occipital, parietal, and temporal regions, specifically for conditions of lower cognitive complexity, that is, face, congruent or incongruent trials. For these conditions, activation was also observed within frontal and sub‐cortical regions, however, their reliability was poor (median ICC < 0.2). Clinically relevant prognostic markers based on task‐based fMRI require high predictive accuracy at an individual level. For this to be achieved, reliability of BOLD responses needs to be high. We have shown that reliability of the BOLD response to an emotional conflict task in healthy individuals is moderate. Implications of these findings to further inform studies of treatment effects and biomarker discovery are discussed.
Highlights
We have shown that reliability of the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) response to an emotional conflict task in healthy individuals is moderate
Examining whether affective information interferes with the processing of cognitive information in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) is an area of investigation in mood disorder research, as emotional dysregulation may interfere with the effectiveness of cognitive control and interrupt cognitive activities (Schimmack & Derryberry, 2005)
The reliability of the BOLD signal in regions subserving an emotional conflict task was poor to moderate, despite behavioral and activation measures suggesting that the task performed as expected at all three time points
Summary
Examining whether affective information interferes with the processing of cognitive information in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) is an area of investigation in mood disorder research, as emotional dysregulation may interfere with the effectiveness of cognitive control and interrupt cognitive activities (Schimmack & Derryberry, 2005). Studies of neural activation during emotion–cognition interference tasks in MDD may be useful to identify biomarkers. One such emotion–cognition interference task is the emotional conflict task (Egner, Etkin, Gale, & Hirsch, 2008; Etkin, Egner, Peraza, Kandel, & Hirsch, 2006), which includes an emotional Stroop-like condition. If the biomarker of interest is one that corresponds to treatment response, it is likely that longitudinal investigations will be required. To facilitate meaningful interpretation of the functional neural circuitry of cognitive and emotional processing over time, it is essential to first understand the test–retest reliability of the BOLD signal
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