Limits of decoding mental states with fMRI.

ABSTRACT: A growing number of studies claim to decode mental states using multi-voxel decoders of brain activity. It has been proposed that the fixed, fine-grained, multi-voxel patterns in these decoders are necessary for discriminating between and identifying mental states. Here, we present evidence that the efficacy of these decoders might be overstated. Across various tasks, decoder patterns were spatially imprecise, as decoder performance was unaffected by spatial smoothing; 90% redundant, as selecting a random 10% of a decoder's constituent voxels recovered full decoder performance; and performed similarly to brain activity maps used as decoders. We distinguish decoder performance in discriminating between mental states from performance in identifying a given mental state, and show that even wh

SUBMITTER: Jabakhanji R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9238276 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature