Meeting Banner
Abstract #0355

Do Neural Oscillations Underlie Haemodynamic Functional Connectivity Measurements?

Joanne Rachel Hale1, Matthew Brookes1, Claire Stevenson1, Johanna Zumer1, Gareth Barnes2, Julia Owen3, Susan Francis1, Srikantan Nagarajan3, Peter Morris1

1SPMMRC, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom; 2University College London, London, United Kingdom; 3University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States


Recently, interest has increased in studying resting state fluctuations in BOLD fMRI and work has shown correlation between BOLD signals from spatially separate but functionally related brain regions. Unfortunately, fMRI signals are affected by non-neuronal physiological artifacts which can lead to spurious connectivity measurements. The ability to investigate the neuronal activity underlying BOLD connectivity is therefore important. Here we use MEG and 7T fMRI to measure independently resting state sensorimotor cortex connectivity. We show that beta-band fluctuations are implicated in sensorimotor network connectivity, adding weight to previous EEG/fMRI results implying a neural oscillatory basis to resting state BOLD signals.