Automated Design of fMRI Paradigms

Abstract

Neuroimaging techniques have been widely used in recent decades to assess brain activation patterns for neuroscience. Task design is the most important challenge for neuroimaging studies, to achieve the best modeling for assessing brain patterns within and across subjects. Specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments rely on the precise and effective design of sequences of stimuli intended to activate specific brain regions (i.e. paradigm design). In this paper, we use PDDL+ to model fMRI paradigms so that neuroscientists can use automated planning to design neuroimaging paradigms in a declarative way. Planning neuroimaging paradigms is especially important for functional studies and presurgical planning. The former should help to ensure an experimental design that allows the analysis of the brain regions that are interesting in the study. The latter should help surgeons select the correct stimuli for a presurgical, non-invasive, exploration of the cognitive functions that might be affected by debridement of brain lesions.