BredeQuery: Coordinate-based meta-analytic search of neuroscientific literature from the SPM environment

Abstract

Large amounts of neuroimaging studies are collected and have chan-ged our view on human brain function. By integrating multiple studies in meta-analysis a more complete picture is emerging. Brain locations are usually reported as coordinates with reference to a specific brain atlas, thus some of the databases offer so-called coordinate-based searching to the users (e.g. Brede, BrainMap). For such search, the publications, which relate to the brain locations represented by the user coordinates, are retrieved. We present BredeQuery - a plugin for the widely used SPM data analytic pipeline. BredeQuery offers a direct link from SPM to the Brede Database coordinate-based search engine. BredeQuery is able to 'grab' brain location coordinates from the SPM windows and enter them as a query for the Brede Database. Moreover, results of the query can be displayed in a MATLAB window and/or exported directly to some popular bibliographic file formats (BibTeX, Reference Manager, etc). © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.