In visual neuroscience, much research has focused on determining whether there is independent processing of object and spatial visual information, of object shape and viewpoint, of different face dimensions, etc. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Ī common goal in perceptual science is to determine whether some stimulus dimensions or components are processed and represented independently from other types of information. Army Research Office through the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, and by grant 2R01MH063760 to FGA from the National Institute of Mental Health. įunding: This work was supported in part by grant no. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Linking signal detection theory and encoding models to reveal independent neural representations from neuroimaging data (pcbi.1006470) can be downloaded from the following OSF page.

Received: FebruAccepted: AugPublished: October 1, 2018Ĭopyright: © 2018 Soto et al. Finally, we apply this new framework to the study of separability of brain representations of face identity and emotional expression (neutral/sad) in a human fMRI study with male and female participants.Ĭitation: Soto FA, Vucovich LE, Ashby FG (2018) Linking signal detection theory and encoding models to reveal independent neural representations from neuroimaging data. In addition, commonly used operational tests of independence are re-interpreted within this new theoretical framework, providing insights on their correct use and interpretation. In particular, the theory identifies exactly what valid inferences can be made about independent encoding of stimulus dimensions from the results of multivariate analyses of neuroimaging data and psychophysical studies. The framework formally specifies the relation between these different levels of perceptual and brain representation, providing the tools for a truly integrative research approach. The new theory allowed us, for the first time, to precisely define separability of neural representations and to theoretically link behavioral and brain measures of separability. This article develops a new quantitative framework that links signal detection theory from psychophysics and encoding models from computational neuroscience, focusing on a special form of independence defined in the psychophysics literature: perceptual separability. Unfortunately, most previous research has only vaguely defined what is meant by “independence,” which hinders its precise quantification and testing. For example, theories of face recognition have proposed either completely or partially independent processing of identity and emotional expression. In visual neuroscience, there is great interest in determining whether important object dimensions are represented independently in the brain.

Many research questions in visual perception involve determining whether stimulus properties are represented and processed independently.

Detection theory