neural decoding

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the computational process of inferring a stimulus, cognitive state, intention, or behaviour from patterns of neural activity measured in the brain, effectively reading out the information represented in neural population codes; neural decoding draws on machine learning methods — support vector machines, linear discriminant analysis, artificial neural networks, and population vector decoding — to find mappings between multidimensional neural activity patterns and the variables they represent; decoding is used both as a research tool to reveal what information is encoded in a brain region and as the core algorithm of brain-computer interfaces that must translate neural signals into real-time commands; decoding imagined speech from neural activity in motor and language cortex, intended limb movements from motor cortex, visual percepts from visual cortex, and emotional states from prefrontal activity are active frontiers; the interpretability of decoding models — understanding why a particular pattern of activity is decoded as a particular stimulus — remains an important challenge in the field

Examples

• Neural decoding of motor cortex signals allowed the patient to control a robotic arm in real time.
• Researchers achieved neural decoding of imagined handwriting from intracortical recordings at 90 characters per minute.