Examining signal changes at the level of cortical layers using T2*-weighted fMRI suffers from a systematic bias caused by extravascular effects of draining veins. T2-weighting promises higher specificity to signal changes near the origin of neural activity. In this work, we use a T2-prepared, multi-echo FLASH sequence at 7 T in a flickering checkerboard experiment targeting the visual cortex to investigate the feasibility of this sequence for laminar fMRI. The layer profiles indicate the desired T2-weighted response in grey matter, but also a peak at the pial surface likely caused by intravascular effects in the pial veins.
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