Neural correlates of autobiographical memory deficits across psychiatric disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Dysfunction of autobiographical memory (AM) is one of the core markers of psychiatric disorders such as major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. However, it remains unclear whether there is a common neural basis underlying AM impairment across psychiatric patients. In this study, a systematic review and meta-analysis using both Seed-based d Mapping with Permutation of Subject Images (SDM-PSI) and Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) approaches were conducted to examine brain activation differences between psychiatric populations and healthy controls during AM. A computerized search was performed using the databases Web of Science, PubMed, APA PsycInfo and EBSCO to identify relevant studies published from inception to 31 October 2025. Twenty-four studies (1385 participants) were identified for the qualitative synthesis and 12 studies (547 participants) for the meta-analysis. The qualitative analysis revealed widespread abnormalities in psychiatric patients in both activation and functional connectivity (FC) across default mode network, salience and attentional network, control network and visual network. Meta-analysis results indicated that patients with psychiatric disorders exhibited hyperactivations in the cingulate cortex, and subsequent meta-analytic connectivity modeling (MACM) analysis demonstrated its widespread co-activation with large-scale functional networks. These findings suggest the network-level dysfunction across psychiatric disorders during AM process and provide insights for future clinical research.