For "«powerful»" we could assume that the reference is to identifying the relevant patterns output by the fMRI, while the ANN transformers seem to be more relat

For "«powerful»" we could assume that the reference is to identifying the relevant patterns output by the fMRI, while the ANN transformers seem to be more related to the translation into «reconstruct[ed] continuous language from [the] cortical semantic representations»¹. I.e. they seem to be useful to give the interpretation a "form", a way to express it. What you read must be matched with something - transformers are "good at language". ¹https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01304-9.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01304-9.epdf