Behavioral inhibition and brain function: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of task-related functional magnetic...

Behavioral inhibition, a stable temperament characterized by fear, withdrawal, and hypervigilance towards novelty, is a transdiagnostic predisposition to psychopathology which can have negative consequences across the lifespan. Numerous studies have examined brain function in behavioral inhibition, but have not reached a consistent conclusion. To address this gap, we used anisotropic effect-size signed differential mapping (AES-SDM) to conduct a whole-brain voxel-based meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies using behavioral inhibition tasks. We analyzed 18 eligible studies of 699 healthy individuals. We found that behavioral inhibition was associated with increased activation in the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and left amygdala, and decreased activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus and right insula. Meta-regression analysis revealed a positive correlation between the proportion of females and neural activation in the right supplementary motor area and right inferior occipital gyrus. These comprehensive findings suggest that neural patterns implicated in cognitive control, emotion regulation, and reward processing may reflect neural signatures of behavioral inhibition and may provide novel insights into the pathways linking this temperament to later psychopathology.