Abstract
Over the last 20 years, human neuroimaging, in particular BOLD imaging, has become the dominant technique for determining visual field representations and measuring selectivity to various visual stimuli in the human cortex. Indeed, BOLD imaging has proven decisive in settling long standing disputes that other techniques such as electrophysiological recordings of single neurons provided only equivocal evidence for. For example, by showing that cognitive influences due to attention or perceptual state could be readily measured in so-called early sensory areas. Part of this success is due to the ability to make precise behavioral measurements through psychophysics in humans which can quantitatively measure such cognitive effects. Leveraging this ability to make quantitive behavioral measurements with concurrent measurement of cortical activity with BOLD imaging, we can provide answers to a central question of visual neuroscience: What is the link between cortical activity and perceptual behavior? To make continued progress in the next 20 years towards answering this question, we must turn to quantitative linking models that formalize hypothesized relationships between cortical activity and perceptual behavior. Such quantitative linking models are falsifiable hypotheses whose success or failure can be determined by their ability or inability to quantitatively account for behavioral and neuroimaging measurements. These linking models will allow us to determine the cortical mechanisms that underly visual perception and account for cognitive influences such as attention on perceptual behavior.