Can a Neural Encoding Model Replicate an fMRI Visualization Study?

Most knowledge of graphical perception comes from behavioral studies. Understanding from a neural perspective is much more limited due in part to neuroimaging studies' expensiveness and difficulty to conduct. In this paper, we evaluate whether Meta's Tribe V2 neural encoding model can recover neural contrasts from a visualization fMRI study. Specifically, we evaluate Tribe V2 through a conceptual replication of the visualization-viewing component of a prior comparison of Bubble charts and three-dimensional Surface charts in color and grayscale. We generate TRIBE-predicted cortical responses for the original stimuli and compare the resulting contrasts with those reported in the human study. The model reproduced the direction of 11 of 14 reported cortical effects, with agreement concentrated in visual-processing regions. This agreement characterizes the model's alignment with the prior human-generated fMRI results rather than independently confirming them. We discuss the limitations encountered when working with this model for in-silico replication and hope to encourage future work exploring this new avenue for neuroimaging studies in visualization. Supplemental materials are available at https://osf.io/8a96x/.