The present invention provides for improved brain imaging and decoding methods that test subjects under authentic, natural conditions that allow for regular patterns of free-flowing thought and perception, as they occur in everyday life, while taking into account brain activities that were measured over spatially diverse regions of the whole-brain (whole-brain connectivity signatures). From such whole-brain connectivity signatures, specific cognitive traits and states are decoded and classified in a whole-brain connectivity analysis which takes into account the full pattern of brain activity. Such methods find applications in clinical diagnosis and monitoring of neuropsychiatric diseases and in nonclinical areas such as neuromarketing and neuroeconomics.
Methods of classifying cognitive states and traits and applications thereof