Abstract #1733
What you see is not what you get: BOLD signal increases with age in children may be the result of increased neuronal-vascular coupling and not increased neuronal activity
Vincent Jerome Schmithorst 1,2 , Jennifer Vannest 2 , Gregory Lee 2 , Luis Hernandez-Garcia 3 , Elena Plante 4 , Akila Rajagopal 2 , and Scott Holland 2
1
Radiology, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh
of UPMC, Pittsburgh, PA, United States,
2
Radiology,
Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH,
United States,
3
Radiology,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States,
4
Speech,
Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona,
AZ, United States
Neuronal-vascular coupling is a likely confound in
developmental fMRI studies. We investigated the etiology
of increasing BOLD signal with age during the
developmental period (ages 3-18) using a simultaneous
functional ASL-BOLD acquisition and a narrative
comprehension task. Results show that while a region
(left STG) of the brain exhibits increases in BOLD
signal with age, these increases are the result of
increased neuronal-vascular coupling and not increased
neuronal activity. In fact, CMRO2 is actually found to
decrease with age. This finding suggests results of
increased BOLD signal or inter-regional correlations
with age need to be interpreted with caution.
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