1. Yes, that is generally what those studies did. 2. Th studies are not BS, the popular press description of those studies is BS.

The patterns and locations of activations might be predictive within a sample of images, but cannot discriminate in other samples. The temporal and spatial resolution is too low.

Great. Do you have to hand an accessible non-BS description of one of those?

I have no biology background, but one ML PoV in-depth description I read of these sounded indistinguishable from BS.