Multivoxel Pattern Analysis for fMRI Data: A Review

Music of the 7Ts: Predicting and Decoding Multivoxel fMRI Responses with Acoustic, Schematic, and Categorical Music Features

Underlying the experience of listening to music are parallel streams of auditory, categorical, and schematic qualia, whose representations and cortical organization remain largely unresolved. We collected high-field (7T) fMRI data in a music listening task, and analyzed the data using multivariate decoding and stimulus-encoding models. Twenty subjects participated in the experiment, which measu...

Decoding intransitive actions in primary motor cortex using fMRI: toward a componential theory of 'action primitives' in motor cortex.

Multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) over functional MRI data can distinguish neural representational states that do not differ in their overall amplitude of BOLD contrast. Here we used MVPA to test whether simple intransitive actions can be distinguished in primary motor cortex. Participants rotated and flexed each of their extremities (hands and feet) during fMRI scanning. The primary motor cor...

Interactions between Memory and New Learning: Insights from fMRI Multivoxel Pattern Analysis

Single-unit recordings in the macaque face patch system reveal limitations of fMRI MVPA.

Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of fMRI data has become an important technique for cognitive neuroscientists in recent years; however, the relationship between fMRI MVPA and the underlying neural population activity remains unexamined. Here, we performed MVPA of fMRI data and single-unit data in the same species, the macaque monkey. Facial recognition in the macaque is subserved by a well ...

Quantifying learning-dependent changes in the brain: Single-trial multivoxel pattern analysis requires slow event-related fMRI.

Single-trial analysis is particularly useful for assessing cognitive processes that are intrinsically dynamic, such as learning. Studying these processes with fMRI is problematic, as the low signal-to-noise ratio of fMRI requires the averaging over multiple trials, obscuring trial-by-trial changes in neural activation. The superior sensitivity of multivoxel pattern analysis over univariate anal...