Jeroen Cornelis Siero1, Natalia Petridou2,3,
Johannes Marinus Hoogduin2, Nick F. Ramsey1
1Rudolf Magnus Institute, University
Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands; 2Radiology,
University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands; 3SPMMRC,
University of Nottingam, Nottingam, United Kingdom
A
limitation of T2*w BOLD fMRI is the confounding contribution of signal from
the larger vasculature. Based on time-to-peak and full-width-at-half-maximum
BOLD characteristics of different vascular compartments identified at 3T, we
characterized the spatio-temporal properties of the BOLD response at 7T in
the visual cortex using an event-related fMRI paradigm with short visual
stimuli, high sampling rate, and multiple spatial resolutions. For the
smallest voxelsize a high time-to-peak spatial heterogeneity of the BOLD
response was observed with fast responses localized in parenchyma. This opens
the possibility to use TTP to probe layer specific BOLD responses in the
human brain.