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An Evaluation of the Use of Multidimensional Scaling for Understanding Brain Connectivity
註釋Abstract: "A large amount of the data is now available about the pattern of connections between brain regions. Computational methods are increasingly relevant for uncovering structure in such datasets. There has been recent interest in the use of Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) for such analysis (Young, 1992, 1993; Scannell & Young, 1993). NMDS produces a spatial representation of the 'dissimilarities' between a number of entities. Normally, it is applied to data matrices containing a large number of levels of dissimilarity, whereas for connectivity data there is a very small number. We address the suitability of NMDS for this case. Systematic numerical studies are presented to evaluate the ability of this method to reconstruct known geometrical configurations from dissimilarity data possessing few levels. In this case there is a strong bias for NMDS to produce annular configurations, whether or not such structure exists in the original data. Using a connectivity dataset derived from the primate cortical visual system (Felleman & Van Essen, 1991), we demonstrate why great caution is needed in interpreting the resulting configuration. Application of an independent method that we developed strongly suggests that the visual system NMDS configuration is affected by an annular bias. We question whether an NMDS analysis of the visual system data supports the two streams view of visual processing (Young, 1992)."