Wait But Why, which of course is not an authoritative neuroscience source, uses “scale” to mean “how many neurons can be simultaneously recorded”. But then it says fMRI and EEG have “high scale”, but “low spatial resolution”—somewhat confusing since low spatial resolution means that fMRI and EEG don’t record any individual neurons. So, my gloss on “scale” is more like WBW actually is talking about, and probably is better called “coverage”. And then it’s best to just talk about “number of simultaneously recorded [individual] neurons” without giving that a shorthand—and only talk about that when we really are recording individual neurons. That’s what Stevenson and Kording (2011) do in “How advances in neural recording affect data analysis”.
Good call on Kernel, I’ll edit to reflect that.
Yep—invasive techniques are necessary—but not sufficient, as the case of ECoG shows.
Hi Steven, thanks!
On terminology, I agree.
Wait But Why, which of course is not an authoritative neuroscience source, uses “scale” to mean “how many neurons can be simultaneously recorded”. But then it says fMRI and EEG have “high scale”, but “low spatial resolution”—somewhat confusing since low spatial resolution means that fMRI and EEG don’t record any individual neurons. So, my gloss on “scale” is more like WBW actually is talking about, and probably is better called “coverage”. And then it’s best to just talk about “number of simultaneously recorded [individual] neurons” without giving that a shorthand—and only talk about that when we really are recording individual neurons. That’s what Stevenson and Kording (2011) do in “How advances in neural recording affect data analysis”.
Good call on Kernel, I’ll edit to reflect that.
Yep—invasive techniques are necessary—but not sufficient, as the case of ECoG shows.