ENIGMA task-based fMRI Working Group (ENIGMA-tb-fMRI)

 
 
Functional brain imaging of patients and healthy control are important endophenotypes for characterizing psychiatric disorders. In ENIGMA, only structural data (T1 and DTI) have been investigated so far. In this working group, we aim to perform large-scale multi-site analyses with task-based fMRI data, i.e. fMRI during the performance of cognitive or affective tasks, in samples with concurrent genetic information.

To harmonize data analysis, we have established an easy-to-implement (docker/singularity) and-easy-to-use, semi-automated pipeline for data analysis and quality control based on fMRIprep (https://github.com/mindandbrain/Halfpipe). This pipeline is suited for distributed analyses and does not include sharing of raw data but of individual or group statistical maps (contrast images) for meta-analyses.

In a first phase we will focus on of three different neurocognitive domains and (variants) of widely used tasks aiming for sample sizes of up to n=10.000.

  • Emotional face processing, operationalized e.g. by tasks contrasting emotional faces with neutral faces or shapes.
  • Reward, operationalized with e.g. variants of the MID (monetary incentive delay task).
  • Working memory, operationalized with e.g. variants of the N-back or Sternberg tasks.

We have already established collaboration with labs world-wide and are actively looking for new collaborators. Please contact us if you are interested to be part of ENIGMA tbfMRI and have samples (n>50) in which (variants of) these tasks have been administered and participants have been genotyped. We are also interested in twin data to estimate heritability of the tasks, as well as repeated measures tb-fMRI data to estimate meta-analytic reliability of task activation.

Although this working group will focus first on imaging genetics within the abovementioned functional domains, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have samples in which (variants of) these tasks have been used in either healthy controls or patients that were not genotyped.

Working Group Leaders

Henrik Walter, Susanne Erk, Ilya Veer
Division of Mind and Brain Research
Dept. of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Germany

Contact

To contact us, please send your email to: enigma@charite.de.
 
 
The ENIGMA tb-fMRI MoU will be posted here soon.
 
 
 

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