EduCortex: browser-based 3D brain visualization of fMRI meta-analysis maps

Journal of Open Source Education, vol. 3, pp. 75

Abstract

EduCortex is an educational browser-based visualization tool that allows the user to enter any functional or anatomical term (e.g., "visual", "face", "motion", "precuneus") and visualize the parts of the brain that are most associated with that term.The process can also be reversed, where the user can click anywhere on the brain to see what terms are most associated with the selected brain region.Using principal components analysis, we also display the functional terms that explained the most variance across all activation maps.This tool works through the combination of Neurosynth (Yarkoni, Poldrack, Nichols, Van Essen, & Wager, 2011), a large-scale, automated database of fMRI papers, and PyCortex (Gao, Huth, Lescroart, & Gallant, 2015), an interactive 3D brain visualizer.Below we detail the features of EduCortex in line with the steps displayed in the following figure.

Authors 6

1. Paul S. Scotti

   The Ohio State University

   Affiliation as printed

   The Ohio State University , Ohio , USA

   The Ohio State University, Ohio, USA

2. Arman P. Kulkarni

   University of Wisconsin–Madison

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Wisconsin-Madison , Wisconsin , USA

   University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, USA

3. Matan Mazor

   University College London

   Affiliation as printed

   University College London , London , UK

   University College London, London, UK

4. Eduard T. Klapwijk Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University , Leiden , Netherlands

   Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

5. Tal Yarkoni

   The University of Texas at Austin

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Texas at Austin , Texas , USA

   University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA

6. Alexander G. Huth

   The University of Texas at Austin

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Texas at Austin , Texas , USA

   University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA