Rapid cortical mapping with cross-participant encoding models

Voxelwise encoding models trained on functional MRI data can produce detailed maps of cortical organization. However, voxelwise encoding models must be trained on many hours of brain responses from each participant, limiting clinical applications. In this study, we introduce a cross-participant modeling framework for rapid cortical mapping. In this framework, voxelwise encoding models are trained on many hours of brain responses from previously scanned reference participants, and then transferred to a new participant by aligning brain responses using a small set of stimuli. We evaluated cross-participant encoding models on linguistic semantic mapping, non-linguistic semantic mapping, and auditory mapping. In each case we found that cross-participant encoding models had more accurate selectivity estimates and prediction performance than within-participant encoding models trained on the same amount of data from the new participant. We also found that cross-participant encoding models improved with the amount of data from each reference participant and the number of reference participants. These results demonstrate that cross-participant modeling can substantially reduce the amount of data required for accurate cortical mapping, which may facilitate new clinical applications of functional neuroimaging.