{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/generalizing-brain-decoding-across-subjects","title":"Group-level Brain Decoding with Deep Learning","arxiv_id":"2205.14102","date":"2022-05-27","proceeding":null,"authors":["Richard Csaky","Mats Van Es","Oiwi Parker Jones","Mark Woolrich"],"abstract":"Decoding brain imaging data are gaining popularity, with applications in brain-computer interfaces and the study of neural representations. Decoding is typicallysubject-specific and does not generalise well over subjects, due to high amounts ofbetween subject variability. Techniques that overcome this will not only providericher neuroscientific insights but also make it possible for group-level models to out-perform subject-specific models. Here, we propose a method that uses subjectembedding, analogous to word embedding in natural language processing, to learnand exploit the structure in between-subject variability as part of a decoding model,our adaptation of the WaveNet architecture for classification. We apply this to mag-netoencephalography data, where 15 subjects viewed 118 different images, with30 examples per image; to classify images using the entire 1 s window followingimage presentation. We show that the combination of deep learning and subjectembedding is crucial to closing the performance gap between subject- and group-level decoding models. Importantly, group models outperform subject models onlow-accuracy subjects (although slightly impair high-accuracy subjects) and can behelpful for initialising subject models. While we have not generally found group-levelmodels to perform better than subject-level models, the performance of groupmodelling is expected to be even higher with bigger datasets. In order to providephysiological interpretation at the group level, we make use of permutation featureimportance. This provides insights into the spatiotemporal and spectral informationencoded in the models. All code is available on GitHub (https://github.com/ricsinaruto/MEG-group-decode).","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.14102v3","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.14102v3.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"generalizing-brain-decoding-across-subjects","repo_url":"https://github.com/ricsinaruto/meg-group-decode","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"brain-decoding","task_name":"Brain Decoding"},{"task_slug":"deep-learning","task_name":"Deep Learning"},{"task_slug":"feature-importance","task_name":"Feature Importance"}],"methods":[{"method_slug":"dilated-causal-convolution","method_name":"Dilated Causal Convolution"},{"method_slug":"mixture-of-logistic-distributions","method_name":"Mixture of Logistic Distributions"},{"method_slug":"wavenet","method_name":"WaveNet"}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2205.14102","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2205.14102"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/ricsinaruto/meg-group-decode","reach":{"status":"ok","spdx":"MIT"}}],"summary":{"unverified":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":0,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"da40cde8352a73d9","entry":"accuracy","repo":"ricsinaruto/meg-group-decode","repo_kind":"official","path":"classifiers_simpleNN.py","file_url":"https://github.com/ricsinaruto/meg-group-decode/blob/HEAD/classifiers_simpleNN.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"da40cde8352a73d9"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}