Fast & real time pRF mapping (Matlab)

Fast / real time pRF mapping is a regression-based approach. Specifically, the BOLD signal is predicted from a linear combination of a set of basis functions encoding the effective stimulus. These basis functions are hashed Gaussians. This means that it essentially utilizes randomly placed isotropic Gaussians for encoding the stimulus but rather than using individual Gaussians, several of those are hashed together to form a single feature.

To find the weight of each feature, the tool can either use ridge regression (most useful for an offline scenario) or gradient descent (most useful for an online scenario).

Instantiation

The tool needs to be instantiated with a number of parameters:

• f_sampling - sampling frequency of data acquisition (1 / TR)
• n_voxels - number of voxels in data set
• n_features - number of features
• n_gaussians - number of Gaussian hashed together for each feature
• fwhm - full width at half maximum of Gaussian
• eta = learning rate (inverse of ridge regularization parameter)

parameters.f_sampling = sampling_frequency;
parameters.r_stimulus = stimulus_resolution;
parameters.n_voxels = number_of_voxels;
parameters.n_features = number_of_features;
parameters.n_gaussians = number_of_Gaussians;
parameters.fwhm = full_width_half_max;
parameters.eta = learning_rate;

hgr = HGR(parameters);

Usage

Voxel selection bla