Intuition, deduction, and the art of picking up the pieces: reciprocal gains of computational modeling and fMRI

Given recent technological and methodological developments, a liaison between neuroimaging and computational neuroscience becomes increasingly promising. Drawing on these developments, two approaches to conduct interdisciplinary research were illustrated. This integration proved fruitful for testing existing theories of brain function as well as developing new theories.
The first part of the thesis presents research embedded within the neuroscience of vision. Specifically, it is concerned with developing a framework suited for evaluating the detailed spatial activation profile predicted by a computational model of how the brain processes surfaces against neuroimaging data.
The second part of the thesis presents research aimed at understanding structure-function relationships in the brain. Specifically, it is concerned with elucidating the role of the cortical rich club, a set of brain regions exhibiting very rich connectivity, in the globally coordinated integration of segregated brain regions into temporal functional networks.