Antonia Hamilton's lab for Social Cognition
AMAT: A meta-analysis toolbox
The number of fMRI papers grows far too fast for anyone to read them all, so I've started exploring ways to search fMRI results graphically and obtain an overview of multiple studies efficiently.
This project is very much a work in progress, especially as it takes place in my spare time. Suggestions for new features, offers of help with coding, complements or complaints are always welcome!
What is AMAT?
AMAT is a matlab program which lets you search through the coordinates reported in lots of fMRI papers. It is designed to answer that question I always ask when looking at my own data:
- what the *?%! does that bit do?
You can read more about AMAT and how it works in the manual.
Advantages of AMAT
AMAT is not the first or only fMRI search tool available (see links below), but I think it has some advantages, in particular it is:
- Quick - data entry is fast and simple
- Minimalist - AMAT won't tell you everything, but it tells you which papers to read in detail
- Easy to update - if you add data, you can search it immediately, and if you want more functionality, you can add that too
Downloading AMAT
Download amat.zip or amat.tar.gz, unzip it and start using it. You will also need spm2 to use AMAT.
Future development
Development of AMAT is ongoing and new versions will be released soon, including a Java version with more search features. If you would like to be kept in touch with developments, sign up to the fledging AMAT mailing list - just email antonia.hamilton -at- gmail.com with the subject line AMAT, and I will be able to let you know when updates become available.
Contribute to AMAT
Contributions to the development of AMAT are always appreciated, so please
- Give me feedback on what works and what doesn't.
- Link to this page from your website and tell your friends about AMAT.
- Add data to the database, use it and send it to me.
- Code some functions yourself - the Matlab version is open source, so play with it as you like.
Other Resources
The fMRI data centre provides complete data sets from many fMRI studies
The BrainMap database lets you search studies in more detail than AMAT
The Brede database also allows coordinate based searching
SumsDB contains anatomical surface maps of human and monkey cortex and includes some functional data
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK antonia.hamilton - at - nottingham.ac.uk Last modified: Mon Sep 17 18:27:49 GMT Daylight Time 2007