Table 2.
Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) Evidence Profile for neuroimaging, neurophysiological and neuropsychological studies
| Outcome | Certainty assessment |
Certainty | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| o. of studies | Study design | Risk of bias | Inconsistency | Indirectness | Imprecision | Other considerations | ||
| Behavioural inhibition only | 2 | observational | unclear b | not serious | not serious | seriousd | none | VERY LOW |
| Brain electrical activity3 | 13 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | not serious | none | LOW |
| Decision-making | 7 | observational | serious a | seriousc | not serious | not serious | none | VERY LOW |
| Delay discounting | 2 | observational | unclear b | not serious | not serious | seriousd | none | VERY LOW |
| Expressive language | 4 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | seriousd | none | VERY LOW |
| Functional neural activity1 | 10 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | not serious | none | LOW |
| Immediate memory | 11 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | not serious | none | LOW |
| Inhibition | 18 | observational | seriousa | seriousc | not serious | not serious | none | VERY LOW |
| Long term memory | 9 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | not serious | none | LOW |
| Mental flexibility | 12 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | not serious | none | LOW |
| Neural structure, connectivity2 | 13 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | not serious | none | LOW |
| Planning | 1 | observational | unclear b | not serious | not serious | seriousd | none | VERY LOW |
| Processing speed | 18 | observational | serious a | seriousc | not serious | not serious | none | VERY LOW |
| Recent memory | 7 | observational | not serious | seriousc | not serious | not serious | none | VERY LOW |
| Receptive language | 2 | observational | unclear b | not serious | not serious | seriousd | none | VERY LOW |
| Recognition of emotions | 1 | observational | unclear b | not serious | not serious | seriousd | strong association | VERY LOW |
| Sustained attention | 13 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | not serious | none | LOW |
| Visual perceptual | 3 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | seriousd | none | VERY LOW |
| Visuoconstructional | 4 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | seriousd | none | VERY LOW |
| Working memory | 20 | observational | not serious | not serious | not serious | not serious | none | LOW |
BOLD; fMRI
Structural MRI studies (volume, surface area, cortical thickness), structural DTI studies (FA), structural MRS
EEG, MEG, ERP
Egger’s test p < 0.05
A minimum of three studies are needed to calculate risk of publication bias using Egger’s linear regression method
Unexplained heterogeneity of results was assessed through examination of variance in point estimates across studies, and the Q, I2, tau and tau2 statistics in the meta-analysis, in addition to examination of large differences in effect size
The number of participants included in the review was smaller than the required number of participants generated from a sample size calculator for a single adequately powered trial