Topic: representational similarity analysis

The ability to record large neural populations—hundreds to thousands of cells simultaneously—is a defining feature of modern systems neuroscience. Aside from improved experimental efficiency, what do these technologies fundamentally buy us? I'll argue that they provide an exciting opportunity to move beyond studying the "average" neural response. That is, by providing dense neural circuit measurements in individual subjects and moments in time, these recordings enable us to track changes across repeated behavioral trials and across experimental subjects. These two forms of variability are stil

Hierarchical cortical organization unifies the brain’s structural and functional organization, yet its relationship to task-evoked cognitive processes remains unclear. How might intrinsic hierarchical properties shape and constrain the cognitive processes required to perform the wide variety of tasks encountered in daily life? By analyzing a human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data set with 26 unique cognitive tasks collected per participant, we characterized the geometry and topography of multi-task representations across the cortical hierarchy using representational similarity

The successful recognition of familiar persons is critical for social interactions. Despite extensive research on the neural representations of familiar faces, we know little about how such representations unfold as someone becomes familiar. In three EEG experiments, we elucidated how representations of face familiarity and identity emerge from different qualities of familiarization: brief perceptual exposure (Experiment 1), extensive media familiarization (Experiment 2) and real-life personal familiarization (Experiment 3). Time-resolved representational similarity analysis revealed that fami

The sensory content and temporal structure of stimuli consistently bias the percept of duration. Previous studies revealed that intervals filled with continuous sensory input are perceived as longer compared to stimuli only marked at their onset and offset, a phenomenon referred to as 'filled duration illusion'. It remains unclear whether these distinct stimulus formats are measured by a common timing mechanism. In our study, we aimed to examine potential differences in the EEG correlates of temporal processing for filled, flanked and empty stimuli. We tested participants in a temporal reprodu