Jonathan Rizzo Polimeni1, Bruce Fischl1,2, Douglas Greve1, Lawrence Leroy Wald1,3
1A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA; 2Computer Science and AI Lab (CSAIL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; 3Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
To test the spatial resolution of the BOLD signal in primary visual cortex (V1), we designed a simple resolution stimulus that contains several easily identifiable features for measuring the spatial spread of the BOLD response across the cortical surface. The isotropic 1x1x1mm3 data could then be analyzed as a function of cortical lamina on the flattened cortex. Our measurements suggests that the majority of the BOLD spatial errors arise from near the pial surface and that avoiding these lamina can significantly improve the study of fine spatial scale activation in the visual cortex.