Identifying thematic roles from neural representations measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The generativity and complexity of human thought stem in large part from the ability to represent relations among concepts and form propositions. The current study reveals how a given object such as rabbit is neurally encoded differently and identifiably depending on whether it is an agent ("the rabbit punches the monkey") or a patient ("the monkey punches the rabbit"). Machine-learning classifiers were trained on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data evoked by a set of short videos that conveyed agent-verb-patient propositions.

Quantitative modeling of the neural representation of objects: how semantic feature norms can account for fMRI activation.

Recent multivariate analyses of fMRI activation have shown that discriminative classifiers such as Support Vector Machines (SVM) are capable of decoding fMRI-sensed neural states associated with the visual presentation of categories of various objects. However, the lack of a generative model of neural activity limits the generality of these discriminative classifiers for understanding the underlying neural representation. In this study, we propose a generative classifier that models the hidden factors that underpin the neural representation of objects, using a multivariate multiple linear regression model.