Domain Adaptation-enhanced searchlight: enabling classification of brain states from visual perception to mental imagery

Abstract In cognitive neuroscience and brain-computer interface research, accurately predicting imagined stimuli is crucial. This study investigates the effectiveness of Domain Adaptation (DA) in enhancing imagery prediction using primarily visual data from fMRI scans of 18 subjects. Initially, we t...

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Main Authors: Alexander Olza, David Soto, Roberto Santana
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2025-06-01
Series:Brain Informatics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s40708-025-00263-0
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author Alexander Olza
David Soto
Roberto Santana
author_facet Alexander Olza
David Soto
Roberto Santana
author_sort Alexander Olza
collection DOAJ
description Abstract In cognitive neuroscience and brain-computer interface research, accurately predicting imagined stimuli is crucial. This study investigates the effectiveness of Domain Adaptation (DA) in enhancing imagery prediction using primarily visual data from fMRI scans of 18 subjects. Initially, we train a baseline model on visual stimuli to predict imagined stimuli, utilizing data from 14 brain regions. We then develop several models to improve imagery prediction, comparing different DA methods. Our results demonstrate that DA significantly enhances imagery prediction in binary classification on our dataset, as well as in multiclass classification on a publicly available dataset. We then conduct a DA-enhanced searchlight analysis, followed by permutation-based statistical tests to identify brain regions where imagery decoding is consistently above chance across subjects. Our DA-enhanced searchlight predicts imagery contents in a highly distributed set of brain regions, including the visual cortex and the frontoparietal cortex, thereby outperforming standard cross-domain classification methods. The complete code and data for this paper have been made openly available for the use of the scientific community.
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institution OA Journals
issn 2198-4018
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publishDate 2025-06-01
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series Brain Informatics
spelling doaj-art-9c81da13fa8442d5b41b3f18d75c92ae2025-08-20T02:37:57ZengSpringerOpenBrain Informatics2198-40182198-40262025-06-0112111710.1186/s40708-025-00263-0Domain Adaptation-enhanced searchlight: enabling classification of brain states from visual perception to mental imageryAlexander Olza0David Soto1Roberto Santana2Intelligent Systems Group, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)Consciousness Group, Basque Center for Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL)Intelligent Systems Group, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)Abstract In cognitive neuroscience and brain-computer interface research, accurately predicting imagined stimuli is crucial. This study investigates the effectiveness of Domain Adaptation (DA) in enhancing imagery prediction using primarily visual data from fMRI scans of 18 subjects. Initially, we train a baseline model on visual stimuli to predict imagined stimuli, utilizing data from 14 brain regions. We then develop several models to improve imagery prediction, comparing different DA methods. Our results demonstrate that DA significantly enhances imagery prediction in binary classification on our dataset, as well as in multiclass classification on a publicly available dataset. We then conduct a DA-enhanced searchlight analysis, followed by permutation-based statistical tests to identify brain regions where imagery decoding is consistently above chance across subjects. Our DA-enhanced searchlight predicts imagery contents in a highly distributed set of brain regions, including the visual cortex and the frontoparietal cortex, thereby outperforming standard cross-domain classification methods. The complete code and data for this paper have been made openly available for the use of the scientific community.https://doi.org/10.1186/s40708-025-00263-0Domain AdaptationBrain decodingFMRISearchlight
spellingShingle Alexander Olza
David Soto
Roberto Santana
Domain Adaptation-enhanced searchlight: enabling classification of brain states from visual perception to mental imagery
Brain Informatics
Domain Adaptation
Brain decoding
FMRI
Searchlight
title Domain Adaptation-enhanced searchlight: enabling classification of brain states from visual perception to mental imagery
title_full Domain Adaptation-enhanced searchlight: enabling classification of brain states from visual perception to mental imagery
title_fullStr Domain Adaptation-enhanced searchlight: enabling classification of brain states from visual perception to mental imagery
title_full_unstemmed Domain Adaptation-enhanced searchlight: enabling classification of brain states from visual perception to mental imagery
title_short Domain Adaptation-enhanced searchlight: enabling classification of brain states from visual perception to mental imagery
title_sort domain adaptation enhanced searchlight enabling classification of brain states from visual perception to mental imagery
topic Domain Adaptation
Brain decoding
FMRI
Searchlight
url https://doi.org/10.1186/s40708-025-00263-0
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