BOLD indirectly measures brain activity based on neurovascular coupling, a reporter which is naturally poor in both its spatial and temporal resolutions. Emerging methods involving spectroscopy (fMRS) and diffusion fMRI suggest that metabolic and structural modifications are taking place in the activated cells. In this paper, we introduce Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST)-weighted fMRI as a new method to explore changes in rat brain activation at 17.2T. Monte Carlo simulations were performed to optimize the acquisition and processing methods. Experimentally, CEST-weighted fMRI activation maps showed negative contrast at +1.2ppm most likely originating from changes in the glucose metabolism.
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