Modeling and analysis of mechanisms underlying fMRI-based decoding of information conveyed in cortical columns

► We modeled ocular dominance maps, fMRI and decoding of the stimulated eye. ► The model predicts functional contrast and classification performance. ► The model assumes realistic MRI voxel sampling and BOLD-blurring of neuronal activity. ► Under these assumptions, the contrast is dominated by low-amplitude contributions from low spatial frequencies, associated with irregularities of the columnar pattern. ► Predicted correct classification is smaller than what has been experimentally obtained.