MEG mind reading challenge

The goal of this challenge is to decode a natural stimulus from short time periods extracted from a continuous MEG signal (measured specifically for the challenge and made freely available), and the problem is formulated as a classification task. The data consisted of 204 MEG channels measured under stimulation with different types of movies (football, feature film etc), and the mind reading task was to decode the type of the movie for testing data. The results of the challenge were presented in the ICANN 2011 conference themed ‘Machine learning re-inspired by brain and cognition’. From the modelling side, the challenge built on earlier PASCAL workshops on Learning from multiple sources organized in NIPS 2008 and 2009, aiming to provide public data useful for developing such models. The challenge provided information on feasibility of decoding natural stimuli from continuous MEG signal, which is a novel task. It is also provided data for future evaluation of multi-source learning models, useful also for machine learning researchers outside MEG analysis.