Task-Related Brain Connectivity Activation Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Intellectual Disability Population: A Meta-Analytic Study

Introduction: Neuroimaging studies of intellectual disability (ID) have been published over the last three decades, but the findings are often inconsistent, and therefore, the neural correlates of ID remain elusive. This article aims to study the different publications in task-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and different ID populations to make a qualitative and quantitative analysis on this field. Methods: After duplicates were removed, only 10 studies matching our inclusion criteria were incorporated. Moreover, a quality assessment of the included studies was done. Qualitative results of the different articles were analyzed, separated by type of task and type of ID. Seed-based d mapping (SDM) software was used. Results: The right temporal gyms was more activated in control subjects than in ID. Concretely, the right temporal gyms is implicated in many cognitive domains as semantic memory processing and language. Moreover, it can be highly influenced by the type of task used in every study. Heterogeneity was not detected. A jackknife sensitivity analysis was also estimated to improve the analysis reliability, and both results were confirmed. Conclusions: More task-fMRI studies on ID must be published to add larger samples to address the pathophysiological questions more directly.