Yury Koush1,
2, Mark A. Elliott3, Frank Scharnowski, 24, Klaus
Mathiak5, 6
1Department
of Radiology and Medical Informatics - CIBM, University of Geneva , Geneva,
Switzerland; 2Institute of Bioengineering, cole Polytechnique
Fdrale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; 3Center for Magnetic
Resonance and Optical Imaging (CMROI), Department of Radiology,, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States; 4Department of
Radiology and Medical Informatics - CIBM, University of Geneva, Geneva,
Switzerland; 5Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and
Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany; 6Institute
of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Center Jlich, JARA -
Translational Brain Medicine, Aachen, Germany
To date, conventional echo planar imaging (EPI) based fMRI is the only method capable of providing real-time neurofeedback from a spatially specific ROI. Our research provides evidence that localized functional single-voxel proton spectroscopy (fSVPS) can be used as an alternative approach. We automatized and evaluated this new approach by running real-time fSVPS experiments on high (3 T) and ultra-high (7 T) magnetic fields. Overall, real-time water SVPS neurofeedback is a promising tool for studying and manipulating brain activity, which holds great promise for important scientific and clinical applications.