Understanding relevance: an fMRI study

Moshfeghi, Y., Pinto, L. R., Pollick, F. E. and Jose, J. M. (2013) Understanding relevance: an fMRI study. In: Serdyukov, P. (ed.) Advances in Information Retrieval. Series: Lecture notes in computer science (7814). Springer, pp. 14-25. ISBN 9783642369728 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-36973-5_2)

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Publisher's URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36973-5_2

Abstract

Relevance is one of the key concepts in Information Retrieval (IR). A huge body of research exists that attempts to understand this concept so as to operationalize it for IR systems. Despite advances in the past few decades, answering the question “How does relevance happen?” is still a big challenge. In this paper, we investigate the connection between relevance and brain activity. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), we measured the brain activity of eighteen participants while they performed four topical relevance assessment tasks on relevant and non-relevant images. The results of this experiment revealed three brain regions in the frontal, parietal and temporal cortex where brain activity differed between processing relevant and non-relevant documents. This is an important step in unravelling the nature of relevance and therefore better utilising it for effective retrieval.

Item Type:Book Sections
Additional Information:Series ISSN: 0302-9743
Status:Published
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Jose, Professor Joemon and Pollick, Professor Frank and Moshfeghi, Dr Yashar
Authors: Moshfeghi, Y., Pinto, L. R., Pollick, F. E., and Jose, J. M.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
College of Science and Engineering > School of Psychology
Publisher:Springer
ISSN:0302-9743
ISBN:9783642369728

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