What is a population receptive field?

A population receptive field (pRF) is a quantitative model of the cumulative response of the population of cells contained within a single fMRI voxel [1]. The pRF model can be used to estimate the response properties of populations of neurons using other measures, such as EcOG and EEG [2].

The pRF model allows us to interpret and predict the responses of a voxel to different stimuli. Such models can be designed to describe various sensory [3] and cognitive [4] processes. More recently, we have used the pRF model to map the retinotopic organization of multiple subcortical nuclei [5].

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References

[1]Dumoulin S, and Wandell BA (2008). Population receptive field estimates in human visual cortex. Neuroimage 39: 647-60.
[2]Winawer J and Wandell BA (2015). Computational neuroimaging and population receptive fields. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19: 349-357.
[3]Thomas JM, Huber E, Stecker E, Boynton G, Saenz M, Fine I (2014) Population receptive field estimates in human auditory cortex. NeuroImage 105: 428-439.
[4]Harvey BM, Klein BP, Petridou N, Dumoulin SO (2013) Topographic organization of numerosity in the human parietal cortex. Science 341: 1123-1126.
[5]DeSimone K, Viviano JD, Schneider KA (2015) Population receptive field estimation reveals two new maps in human subcortex. Journal of Neuroscience 35: 9836-9847.