Department of Neurology and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité, Berlin, Germany.
PLoS One. 2012;7(4):e33896. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0033896. Epub 2012 Apr 2.
The modern metaphor of the brain is that of a dynamic information processing device. In the current study we investigate how a core cognitive network of the human brain, the perceptual decision system, can be characterized regarding its spatiotemporal representation of task-relevant information. We capitalize on a recently developed information theoretic framework for the analysis of simultaneously acquired electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging data (fMRI) (Ostwald et al. (2010), NeuroImage 49: 498-516). We show how this framework naturally extends from previous validations in the sensory to the cognitive domain and how it enables the economic description of neural spatiotemporal information encoding. Specifically, based on simultaneous EEG-fMRI data features from n = 13 observers performing a visual perceptual decision task, we demonstrate how the information theoretic framework is able to reproduce earlier findings on the neurobiological underpinnings of perceptual decisions from the response signal features' marginal distributions. Furthermore, using the joint EEG-fMRI feature distribution, we provide novel evidence for a highly distributed and dynamic encoding of task-relevant information in the human brain.
大脑的现代隐喻是一个动态的信息处理装置。在目前的研究中，我们调查了人类大脑的核心认知网络——感知决策系统——如何在其与任务相关信息的时空表示方面得到描述。我们利用最近开发的一种信息论框架来分析同时获取的脑电图 (EEG) 和功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 数据 (Ostwald 等人，2010 年，《神经影像》49: 498-516)。我们展示了这个框架如何自然地从之前在感觉领域的验证扩展到认知领域，以及它如何能够对神经时空信息编码进行经济描述。具体来说，基于 n = 13 名观察者执行视觉感知决策任务的同时 EEG-fMRI 数据特征，我们展示了信息论框架如何能够从响应信号特征的边缘分布中重现关于感知决策的神经生物学基础的早期发现。此外，使用联合 EEG-fMRI 特征分布，我们为任务相关信息在人类大脑中的高度分布式和动态编码提供了新的证据。
