Evaluating population receptive field estimation frameworks in terms of robustness and reproducibility

Within vision research retinotopic mapping and the more general receptive field estimation approach constitute not only an active field of research in itself but also underlie a plethora of interesting applications. This necessitates not only good estimation of population receptive fields (pRFs) but also that these receptive fields are consistent across time rather than dynamically changing. It is therefore of interest to maximize the accuracy with which population receptive fields can be estimated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) setting. This, in turn, requires an adequate estimation framework providing the data for population receptive field mapping. More specifically, adequate decisions with regard to stimulus choice and mode of presentation need to be made. Additionally, it needs to be evaluated whether the stimulation protocol should entail mean luminance periods and whether it is advantageous to average the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal across s...