Intensity-dependent topographical expansion of sensory representations

Abstract

Neuroimaging studies typically assume that sensory properties are encoded in response magnitude within fixed neural populations. However, this approach does not capture changes in the spatial extent of activation topography, despite growing evidence for its behavioral relevance. Stimulus intensity provides a powerful test case for the role of activation topography as a coding feature because it is a basic, parametrically varying property shared across sensory modalities. Using a Bayes factor-based approach and four functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets (three large-scale datasets [total N = 609] and one precision dataset [>2300 trials]), we tested whether higher-intensity stimulation is associated with expansion of activation topography. Participants received sensory stimuli of varying intensities in somatosensory (heat, laser, tactile), auditory, and visual modalities. High-versus low-intensity painful stimulation consistently produced topographical expansion in areas including the primary somatosensory, posterior midcingulate, primary visual cortices, and cerebellar lobules V and VI. This result replicated across two independent large-scale datasets and within individual participants in the precision dataset. Expansion was also observed for tactile, auditory, and visual stimulation, and its extent correlated with psychophysical discriminability. Topographical expansion involved both the enlargement of already-activated areas and the recruitment of novel regions. These findings establish topographical expansion as a replicable feature of intensity coding, challenging the prevailing assumption of a fixed neural topography.