Sure, plenty - you might start with Boynton et al 1999, Vision Research "Neuronal Basis of Contrast Discrimination" - they fit a single d' model of contrast discrimination to fMRI response. This recent JOV paper is also a good example in the same domain: http://www.journalofvision.org/content/9/2/20.full.
In vision science, at least, this kind of thing is now common practice, although the theoretical link between neural response and a construct like d' isn't very clear (but they certainly can be correlated). You should be able to find hundreds, or thousands, of studies along those lines...
I agree with Andrew, also check out: Horace Barlow’s classic “Single units and sensation” paper: http://sirl.stanford.edu/newlm/images/c/ca/Barlow_1967.pdf Another Barlow’s (Bob) lab did it with Limulus see e.g. Passaglia et al Deciphering a neural code for vision PNAS 1997 94: 12649-12654
I would suggest you to have a look at the following papers, if you have not read them yet. These seminal papers opened up an exciting field of perceptual decision making research by quantitatively relating neuronal activity to psychophysical performance with applying and extending Signal Detection Theory.
Britten, Shadlen, Newsome, Movshon (1992) The analysis of visual motion: a comparison of neuronal and psychophysical performance. J Neurosci 12: 4745-4765.
Britten, Newsome, Shadlen, Celebrini, Movshon (1996) A relationship between behavioral choice and the visual responses of neurons in macaque MT. Visual Neurosci 13: 87-100.
A recent review by Nienborg et al. may also be a must reference to overview and properly interpret the results obtained over the past 20 years.
Nienborg H, Cohen MR, Cumming BG (2012) Decision-related activity in sensory neurons: correlations among neurons and with behavior. Annu Rev Neurosci 35: 463-483.
In addition to the papers mentioned earlier, for studies with an SDT-driven approach and fMRI, I would suggest reading this recent and very elegant work by Pestilli, Carrasco, Heeger & Gardner :
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/carrascolab/publications/Pestillietal.Neuron2011.pdf
In addition to those above, here is an arbitrary Open Access example from the world of auditory single-unit recordings:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10162-010-0215-6 (Ana Alves-Pinto, Sylvie Baudoux, Alan R. Palmer, Christian J. Sumner)
Luo, T. Z., & Maunsell, J. H. (2015). Neuronal Modulations in Visual Cortex Are Associated with Only One of Multiple Components of Attention. Neuron, 86(5), 1182-1188.
http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(15)00414-6
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Methodology
- Research Methodology
- Research Papers