Pittsburgh Mind Reading Competition

Francisco Pereira points out a fun Prediction Competition. Francisco says:

DARPA is sponsoring a competition to analyze data from an unusual functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging experiment. Subjects watch videos inside the scanner while fMRI data are acquired. Unbeknownst to these subjects, the videos have been seen by a panel of other subjects that labeled each instant with labels in categories such as representation (are there tools, body parts, motion, sound), location, presence of actors, emotional content, etc.

The challenge is to predict all of these different labels on an instant-by-instant basis from the fMRI data. A few reasons why this is particularly interesting:

  1. This is beyond the current state of the art, but not inconceivably hard.
  2. This is a new type of experiment design current analysis methods cannot deal with.
  3. This is an opportunity to work with a heavily examined and preprocessed neuroimaging dataset.
  4. DARPA is offering prizes!

3 Replies to “Pittsburgh Mind Reading Competition”

  1. I should add that 3) means that the dataset has been deemed nice enough to be made public, rather than that it has been worked
    over to death…

  2. Exactly. It’s our great chance to appear on the tabloids!

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