Response to Schöpfer et al. ‘Neural systems underlying autobiographical memory dysregulations in depression: A neuroimaging meta-analysis’

Abstract

We thank you for the opportunity to respond to the letter by Schöpfer et al. regarding our recent meta-analysis published in Psychological Medicine (Cheng et al., Psychological Medicine , 2026;56:e1). We are grateful for their thoughtful comments, which prompted us to clarify methodological decisions and conduct additional analyses. The supplementary analyses generally corroborate the central finding of our work, suggesting altered dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activation – but not amygdala or hippocampal alterations – in depression during autobiographical memory recall. Schöpfer et al. correctly note that five studies used designs with more than two groups and reported omnibus F-tests without the post-hoc pairwise statistics required for seed-based d mapping (SDM). Because a principal aim of our meta-analysis was to maximize the inclusion of relevant data, we adopted a pragmatic approach in these cases, extracting the depression-versus-healthy-control contrast that was most closely aligned with our meta-analytic focus. We acknowledge that this conversion, and the selection of particular contrasts, may introduce bias. Moreover, inconsistencies in the direction of effects – for example, between individuals at risk for depression and patients with depression – cannot be fully modeled within the coordinate-based framework applied here. To address this concern directly, we conducted a sensitivity analysis excluding the affected studies. The right paracingulate cortex (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dACC), which formed the largest and most robust cluster in the primary analysis, remained significant (SDM-Z value = 3.315; p = .000458, voxels