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Understanding Relevance: An fMRI Study

  • Conference paper
Advances in Information Retrieval (ECIR 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 7814))

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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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Yashar Moshfeghi, Luisa R. Pinto & Joemon M. Jose

  2. School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Frank E. Pollick

Authors
  1. Yashar Moshfeghi
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  2. Luisa R. Pinto
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  3. Frank E. Pollick
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  4. Joemon M. Jose
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Yandex, Leo Tolstoy, 16, 119021, Moscow, Russia

    Pavel Serdyukov  & Ilya Segalovich  & 

  2. Kontur Labs and Ural Federal University, Fonvizina 3-27, 620078, Yekaterinburg, Russia

    Pavel Braslavski

  3. National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Pokrovskii bd 11, 109028, Moscow, Russia

    Sergei O. Kuznetsov

  4. University of Amsterdam, Turfdraagsterpad 9, 1012 XT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jaap Kamps

  5. Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, Walton Hall, MK7 6AA, Milton Keynes, UK

    Stefan Rüger

  6. Mathematics & Computer Science Department, Emory University, 400 dowman Drive, 30329, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Eugene Agichtein

  7. Department of Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, London, UK

    Emine Yilmaz

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© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Moshfeghi, Y., Pinto, L.R., Pollick, F.E., Jose, J.M. (2013). Understanding Relevance: An fMRI Study. In: Serdyukov, P., et al. Advances in Information Retrieval. ECIR 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7814. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36973-5_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36973-5_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36972-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36973-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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