KDnuggets News 07:06, item 6, Features

KDnuggets : News : 2007 : n06 : item6

Features

Date: 15 Mar 2007
Subject: 2007 Pittsburgh Brain Activity Interpretation Competition

2007 Pittsburgh Brain Activity Interpretation Competition:

Interpreting subject-driven actions and sensory experience

In a rigorously characterized virtual world

Awards to be presented at the
Organization for Human Brain Mapping Conference
on June 14, 2007 in Chicago, Illinois, USA

Prizes: 1st $10,000; 2nd $5,000; 3rd $2,000
Board Choice, Neuroscience Prize: $5,000
For details see: http://www.braincompetition.org

For the second year of the Pittsburgh Brain Activity Interpretation
Competition (PBIAC), we will provide a novel data set and award
$22,000 in prizes at OHBM for the best interpretation of the data.
Entrants will use fMRI data to predict what individuals perceive and
how they act and feel in a novel Virtual Reality world involving
searching for and collecting objects, interpreting changing
instructions, and avoiding a threatening dog. Objective perception and
response data to be predicted will be based on the VR world state, eye
movements, and game input. Subjective features, such as arousal, will
be based on continuous post-hoc ratings.

There will be a 45 minute Web Cast that can be viewed live on Friday,
March 16 at 11am EDT (Pittsburgh time) or downloaded thereafter
explaining the competition and data sets (see Webcast)

(Click to link to Video)

This years competition follows on the heels of the successful 2006
PBIAC (http://www.ebc.pitt.edu/PBAIC.html), which involved prediction
of the subjective experience of movie viewing from fMRI, with
correlations sometimes exceeding the level of inter-rater reliability
(r>.8). The competition generated widespread interest as evident by
25,000 website hits and 273 groups in 31 countries downloading fMRI
data sets. It was judged by a board of experts from the field of
neuroimaging and included an objective scoring method. The competition
attracted coverage in the popular and scientific press, was reported
to have advanced the field, and has been held up as a model for
scientific competitions (see What's on your mind? Nature Neuroscience
2006, Vol. 8, p. 981). Note the first and third place winners of 2006
were new to brain imaging so new approaches can win.

Entries will be evaluated by the 2007 competition scientific advisory
board including: G. Siegle & W. Schneider (University of Pittsburgh --
coordinating site); A. Bartels (Max Planck Institute for Biological
Cybernetics); E. Formisano & R. Goebel (Maastricht University);
J. Haxby & G. Stephen (Princeton University); U. Hasson (New York
University & Weizmann Institute); T. Mitchell (Carnegie Mellon
University); T. Nichols (University of Michigan); A. Battle (Stanford
University); E. Olivetti, (ITC-IRST; Italy)

KDnuggets : News : 2007 : n06 : item6

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