Perceptual Object and Action Maps in the Human Brain

Alex Huth, first author of our new paper, talks about how visual information about thousands of objects and actions are represented across human visual cortex. For more information, please visit our web site (gallantlab.org) or get the paper: Huth, A.G., S. Nishimoto, A.T. Vu & J.L. Gallant (2012). A continuous semantic space describes representation of thousands of object and action categories across the human brain. Neuron, December 20 2012.

For more information about this paper or our other work please visit our lab web page:
http://gallantlab.org

• Category

  Science & Technology

[AlyetAJ]

Your sample size is way too small. All the effort that should've gone into the data collecting went into making a cute animation/game for people to play around with. Maybe you should start selling it as an app on various app stores.

[gallantlabucb]

And why do you think that? Remember, we're not averaging over subjects here, as often is done in fMRI experiments. We're building a model for each individual person. Thus, our models are much more predictive than typical fMRI results.

As for the animation, this is a tool that we use in-lab to visualize our data. It is not a toy. It is not designed to make money. It is designed to move our science forward.

[Lance Winslow]

If you send energy to the same parts of the brain, does it bring up thoughts about cats, motorcycles, etc? I am sorry I am not completely buying all this, but I do believe this must have been a very interesting and fun research study.

[gallantlabucb]

Its always good to be skeptical. fMRI is a correlational method that measures blood flow, not neurons, so it would be good to get more evidence about the relationship between fMRI signals and neural selectivity. Ideally, the best way to get at this issue would be to use fMRI to systematically map the brain of a neurological patient before brain surgery, and then do direct neural stimulation during surgery. No one has attempted this yet but it will likely be done some time in the near future.

[Randy Robbins]

what's the point though? now we know how to make more subliminal commercials and advertisements?

[gallantlabucb]

This is a basic neuroscience project. We seek to understand how different kinds of information are mapped across the cortical surface. Maps are a basic principle of cortical organization, so any time we find a map we can infer that we have discovered something important about the brain. Potential applications of this basic research finding, such as improved diagnosis, brain decoding devices and so on, are a different issue.

[Cassidy Curtis]

Just wanted to compliment you on making a really outstanding video. Not only is the research itself fascinating, but this is also one of the best explanations I've ever seen of such a complex topic. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I am in show business, and there's some excellent showmanship on display here. Perfect use of the medium. Bravo!

[kowalityjesus]

yuo guys are FREAKIN AWESOME

[Nicola Sabbadini]

I think that this is a fantastic technology. Very interesting! There is the possibility of collect same semantic schema for long-term memory?

[Alireza Saberi]

it is fantastic job. I'm working on similar project at MNI in McGill

[spanjerxxxx]

Thank's for the Upload

[kezmicdust]

This is a bit of long shot, but do you guys think this could be helpful in understanding how to devise strategies to help the brain recover from cortical blindness? For example, my wife can recognize a shape when it is presented in an array, but not the individual shape. Could functional MRI and your brain map help to understand why that is the case and further, how to recruit healthy brain cells to perform the tasks of the dead brain cells?

[terrymation]

Wow, this is really intriguing! I wonder if you were top use the same mapping process on individuals as they age from infancy to see how much change there is in the semantic space...

[scharminkel]

is the brain viewer applet dead? used to work for me but not anymore... ( ..)

really nice research by the way ^_^)b

[Abel1120]

wow, great start i have been thinking how to see and understand dreams for a while, and you guys really hit it on the nose, I thought to understand how our brains sees colors and shapes, then I was going to go to sound. I hope when I finish with my degrees I can work with people like yourself...............

[PutItAway101]

If they did this with your brain, there would be no data to collect.

[PutItAway101]

So many ill-informed negative comments from people with no understanding and no imagination. This is amazing.