Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31123717›Full record

ArticleCommunications biology2019

Reconstructing faces from fMRI patterns using deep generative neural networks.

Rufin VanRullen, Leila Reddy

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Communications biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
47citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

47 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

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  9. Population encoding of observed and actual somatosensations in the human posterior parietal cortex.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Rufin VanRullenCerCo, CNRS, UMR 5549, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, 31052 France.
Leila ReddyCerCo, CNRS, UMR 5549, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, 31052 France.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Although distinct categories are reliably decoded from fMRI brain responses, it has proved more difficult to distinguish visually similar inputs, such as different faces. Here, we apply a recently developed deep learning system to reconstruct face images from human fMRI. We trained a variational auto-encoder (VAE) neural network using a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) unsupervised procedure over a large data set of celebrity faces. The auto-encoder latent space provides a meaningful, topologically organized 1024-dimensional description of each image. We then presented several thousand faces to human subjects, and learned a simple linear mapping between the multi-voxel fMRI activation patterns and the 1024 latent dimensions. Finally, we applied this mapping to novel test images, translating fMRI patterns into VAE latent codes, and codes into face reconstructions. The system not only performed robust pairwise decoding (>95% correct), but also accurate gender classification, and even decoded which face was imagined, rather than seen.

Indexed as

Deep LearningMagnetic Resonance ImagingNeural Networks, ComputerPattern Recognition, VisualAdultAlgorithmsBrainDatabases, FactualFemaleHumansImage Processing, Computer-AssistedMaleModels, TheoreticalPattern Recognition, AutomatedPrincipal Component AnalysisProbabilityMachine learningPerception

Identifiers

PMID31123717
PMCPMC6529435

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.