Evaluating population receptive field estimation frameworks in terms of robustness and reproducibility

Within vision research retinotopic mapping and the more general receptive field estimation approach constitute not only an active field of research in itself but also underlie a plethora of interesting applications. This necessitates not only good estimation of population receptive fields (pRFs) but...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	PloS one Vol. 9; no. 12; p. e114054
Main Authors:	Senden, Mario, Reithler, Joel, Gijsen, Sven, Goebel, Rainer
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States Public Library of Science 02-12-2014 Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects:	Algorithms Biology and Life Sciences Brain mapping Decisions Functional magnetic resonance imaging Humans Magnetic resonance Magnetic resonance imaging Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods Mapping Medical imaging Neurosciences Oxygenation Photic Stimulation Population statistics Receptive field Reproducibility Reproducibility of Results Research and Analysis Methods Retina Retina - pathology Science Vision Tests - methods Netherlands
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Summary:	Within vision research retinotopic mapping and the more general receptive field estimation approach constitute not only an active field of research in itself but also underlie a plethora of interesting applications. This necessitates not only good estimation of population receptive fields (pRFs) but also that these receptive fields are consistent across time rather than dynamically changing. It is therefore of interest to maximize the accuracy with which population receptive fields can be estimated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) setting. This, in turn, requires an adequate estimation framework providing the data for population receptive field mapping. More specifically, adequate decisions with regard to stimulus choice and mode of presentation need to be made. Additionally, it needs to be evaluated whether the stimulation protocol should entail mean luminance periods and whether it is advantageous to average the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal across stimulus cycles or not. By systematically studying the effects of these decisions on pRF estimates in an empirical as well as simulation setting we come to the conclusion that a bar stimulus presented at random positions and interspersed with mean luminance periods is generally most favorable. Finally, using this optimal estimation framework we furthermore tested the assumption of temporal consistency of population receptive fields. We show that the estimation of pRFs from two temporally separated sessions leads to highly similar pRF parameters.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Conceived and designed the experiments: MS JR SG RG. Performed the experiments: MS JR SG. Analyzed the data: MS JR. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MS SG. Wrote the paper: MS JR. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:	1932-6203 1932-6203
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pone.0114054