Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Although the majority of fMRI studies exploit magnitude changes only, there is an increasing interest regarding the potential additive information conveyed by the phase signal. This integrated part of the complex number furnished by the MR scanners can also be used for exploring direct detection of neuronal activity and for thermography.

In this article, a review is made of the current knowledge concerning the physiology and metabolism of neuronal activity, as provided by the application of NMR approaches in vivo. The evidence furnished by other functional spectroscopic and imaging techniques, such as PET and optical methods, are also discussed.

Recently, the possibility to use both magnitude and phase image sets for the statistical evaluation of fMRI has been proposed, with the prospective of increasing both statistical power and the spatial specificity. In the present work, several issues that affect the spatial and temporal stability in fMRI phase time series in the presence of physiologic noise processes are reviewed, discussed and illustrated by experiments performed at 3 T. The observed phase value is a fingerprint of the underlying voxel averaged magnetic field variations.

Neuronal current MRI (nc-MRI) is an imaging method that directly maps magnetic field changes caused by neuronal currents with, at the same time, a high spatial and temporal resolution. A viable nc-MRI method would be of great benefit, both for the study of human brain function and for clinical applications in the field of epilepsy, especially for the noninvasive presurgical mapping of epileptogenic foci. A survey of fundamental issues in nc-MRI is reviewed, and challenges for future developments of the method are described within this context.

Interest about simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquisition has rapidly increased during the last years because of the possibility that the combined method offers to join temporal and spatial resolution, providing in this way a powerful tool to investigate spontaneous and evoked brain activities. However, several intrinsic features of MRI scanning become sources of artifacts on EEG data.

OBJECTIVE: Aim of the study was to record BOLD-fMRI interleaved with evoked potentials for single-epochs of visual stimulation and to investigate the possible relationship between these two measures.

Signal fluctuations in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can result from a number of sources that may have a neuronal, physiologic or instrumental origin. To determine the relative contribution of these sources, we recorded physiological (respiration and cardiac) signals simultaneously with fMRI in human volunteers at rest with their eyes closed. State-of-the-art technology was used including high magnetic field (7 T), a multichannel detector array and high-resolution (3 mm(3)) echo-planar imaging.

The presence of spontaneous BOLD fMRI signal fluctuations in human grey matter compromises the detection and interpretation of evoked responses and limits the sensitivity gains that are potentially available through coil arrays and high field systems. In order to overcome these limitations, we adapted and improved a recently described correlated noise suppression method (de Zwart et al., 2008), demonstrating improved precision in estimating the response to ultra-short visual stimuli at 7 T.

The phenomenon of spontaneous fMRI activity is increasingly being exploited to investigate the connectivity of functional networks in human brain with high spatial-resolution. Although mounting evidence points towards a neuronal contribution to this activity, its functional role and dependence on behavioral state remain unclear. In this work, we used BOLD fMRI at 7 T to study the modulation of spontaneous activity in occipital areas by various behavioral conditions, including resting with eyes closed, eyes open with visual fixation, and eyes open with fixation and focal visual stimulation.

Reductions in blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD)-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals below baseline levels have been observed under several conditions as negative activation in task-activation studies or anticorrelation in resting-state experiments. Converging evidence suggests that negative BOLD signals (NBSs) can generally be explained by local reductions in neural activity. Here, we report on NBSs that accompany hemodynamic changes in regions devoid of neural tissue. The NBSs were investigated with high-resolution studies of the visual cortex (VC) at 7 T.