title: Different analysis solutions for different spatial resolutions? Moving towards a mesoscopic mapping of functional architecture in the human brain.
abstract: This comment challenges the dichtotomy that Kriegeskorte and Bandettini (this issue) propose to exist between "activation-based" and "information-based" approaches to fMRI analyses and argues that multi-variate analyses are just a special case within the overall repertoire of methods for analyzing paradigm-related BOLD signal variations. Moreover, this comment argues that using multi-variate approaches comes at a price, trading-off spatial resolution for sensitivity, and thus partially cancels potential benefits from high-field fMRI. Paradoxically, this comment thus concludes that pattern analyses provide a powerful complement to existing methods but not the complement that will actually permit to map functional architecture at mesoscopic resolution, i.e., one of the most interesting applications of high-field fMRI.
authors.affiliation: INSERM, Unité 562, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France. andreas.kleinschmidt@cea.fr
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kleinschmidt
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D007257:Information Theory; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen