Coutanche Marc N, Solomon Sarah H, Thompson-Schill Sharon L
Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2016 Feb;82:134-141. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.01.018. Epub 2016 Jan 19.
Information in the human visual system is encoded in the activity of distributed populations of neurons, which in turn is reflected in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Over the last fifteen years, activity patterns underlying a variety of perceptual features and objects have been decoded from the brains of participants in fMRI scans. Through a novel multi-study meta-analysis, we have analyzed and modeled relations between decoding strength in the visual ventral stream, and stimulus and methodological variables that differ across studies. We report findings that suggest: (i) several organizational principles of the ventral stream, including a gradient of pattern granulation and an increasing abstraction of neural representations as one proceeds anteriorly; (ii) how methodological choices affect decoding strength. The data also show that studies with stronger decoding performance tend to be reported in higher-impact journals, by authors with a higher h-index. As well as revealing principles of regional processing, our results and approach can help investigators select from the thousands of design and analysis options in an empirical manner, to optimize future studies of fMRI decoding.
人类视觉系统中的信息是通过神经元分布群体的活动进行编码的，而这种活动又反映在功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据中。在过去的十五年里，各种感知特征和物体背后的活动模式已从fMRI扫描参与者的大脑中解码出来。通过一项新颖的多研究荟萃分析，我们分析并建立了视觉腹侧流中解码强度与不同研究中刺激和方法学变量之间的关系模型。我们报告的研究结果表明：（i）腹侧流的几个组织原则，包括模式粒度的梯度以及神经表征随着向前推进而日益抽象化；（ii）方法学选择如何影响解码强度。数据还显示，解码性能较强的研究往往由h指数较高的作者发表在影响因子较高的期刊上。除了揭示区域加工原则外，我们的研究结果和方法可以帮助研究人员从数千种设计和分析选项中以实证方式进行选择，以优化未来的fMRI解码研究。
