Typically, BOLD signals are regarded as how much effort that people process a cognitive task.
But, is that possible that 'the efficacy of how people use this activation' could determine behavioural performance?
For example, in order to conduct a memory task, people might recruit more brain activation (can be intepreted as pomping more petrol). But different groups of people might vary in the efficacy of using this extra BOLD activation (different cars use the same amount of petrol but with different efficacy of petrol consumption).
I know that there is a term, called neural efficacy, but different from the concept above.
neural efficacy is like the ability of filling more petrol, but not the efficacy of using it.
So, I'm wondering if there is a relevant theory about this concept?
This would be a great question to post in our new free medical imaging question and answer forum ( www.imagingQA.com ), there are already a few fMRI questions on there. If useful, please feel free to open a new topic at the link below :
https://community.imagingqa.com/c/questions/5
If Person A performs better than Person B on the same cognitive task and shows less brain activation than Person B during the task, is that not evidence of greater neural efficiency?
Blaine Tomkins Yes, but what about if person A and B have the same performance and the same activation.
For example, in an easy task, because it is easy, they might recruit equalt and minimun amount of activation as an essential activation to conduct this task.
But is that possible that B consumes 80% of activation, but A only uses 10% (more effiviently).
And we could probably observe this according to correlational results. I assume that B would show sugnificant correlation between BOLD and behavioural performance because their loads of activation are higher.
sorry about my crazy thought
Not necessarily. Individuals who perform better on a cognitive task often display less brain activation rather than more (see neural efficiency hypothesis). Furthermore, these individual differences have shown to be task-specific rather than general - which goes against the idea that Person A's neural (physiological) constitution is generally more energy-efficient than Person B's.
Article Neural efficiency as a function of task demands
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