Kavita Singh¹, Simone Cauzzo^1,2, Maria Guadalupe Garcia Gomar¹, Matthew Stauder¹, Nicola Vanello³, Claudio Passino^2,4, and Marta Bianciardi^1
1Brainstem Imaging Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Boston, MA, United States, ²Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Institute of Life Sciences, Pisa, Italy, ³Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, ⁴Fondazione Toscana Gabriele Monasterio, Pisa, Italy

For a holistic understanding of sleep, arousal and associated motor processes, we investigated the resting-state functional connectivity of 18 arousal and motor brainstem nuclei in living humans by the use of high spatial-resolution 7 Tesla resting-state fMRI, as well as a recently developed in-vivo probabilistic atlas of these nuclei in standard space.  Further, we verified the translatability of our brainstem connectome approach to conventional (e.g. 3 Tesla) fMRI. Results provided comprehensive and augmented brainstem-brain connectome to understand mechanisms of arousal-motor function in health and disease conditions and its translatability in clinical settings.

Yinghua Yu^1,2, Ikuhiro Kida^1,2, and Nobuhiro Hagura^1,2
1Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Osaka, Japan, ²Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

In humans, corticospinal excitability is reduced when preparing for an action; i.e. motor preparatory inhibition. Functional relevance of this inhibition has been proposed, however, the site where the actual inhibition occurs, either at the primary motor cortex (M1) or at the downstream spinal-circuit, is still unclear. By measuring vascular space occupancy (VASO) with 7T fMRI, we investigated the direct signature of preparatory inhibition of neural activity across M1 cortical layers. Our preliminary analysis showed that preparation was associated with a reduced activity of the superficial layers of M1. Motor preparatory inhibition likely takes place in M1 in a layer-dependent manner.

Lenno R. P. T. Ruijters¹, Nikos Priovoulos¹, and Wietske van der Zwaag^1
1Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The functional organization of the cerebellar cortex is largely unexplored in-vivo. However, connectivity studies suggest it is organized in successive Zebrin-II positive and negative stripes that receive descending signals from the cerebrum and ascending input from the peripheral nervous system respectively. To examine this stripe-based functional organization we used a tactile-stimulation experiment with actual (bottom-up) and predicted (top-down) stimulation at 7T. This paradigm gives reliable responses to predicted and experienced stimuli. Our fMRI results suggest that there is a spatial separation in the cerebellum between these two processes in line with the hypothesised relation between function and Zebrin-II stripes.

Miriam Heynckes¹, Elia Formisano^1,2, Peter De Weerd¹, and Federico De Martino^1
1Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands, ²Maastricht Centre for Systems Biology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands

Layer-fMRI probes the mesoscopic neural architecture in humans non-invasively. We studied the behavioral relevance of layer-specific processing by investigating temporal deviance detection in the auditory system. Preliminary results indicate increased response in superficial layers to a temporal deviant, in line with a feedback signal entering superficial layers during deviant detection.  

Jiajia Yang^1,2, Masaki Fukunaga³, Yinghua Yu^2,4, Laurentius Huber⁵, Peter A Bandettini², and Norihiro Sadato^3
1Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan, ²Section on Functional Imaging Methods, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, United States, ³Division of Cerebral Integration, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Japan, ⁴Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Suita, Japan, ⁵Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands

The human brain is constantly generating and updating predictions. The midcingulate cortex (MCC) is one of the areas that contribute to prediction processing, while MCC layer-specific function remains unknown. In the present study, we used a tactile index finger prediction task that consists of sequential finger poking during high-resolution (0.76mm) BOLD and VASO fMRI at 7T to investigate how the prediction activity changes across layers in the human MCC. We found the double-peak activity feature across MCC layers for all prediction tasks, and the enhanced activity within MCC superficial layers may reflect the prediction error processing.

Gijs J. Heij^1,2, Joao Periquito¹, Haopeng Han¹, Antje Els¹, Thoralf Niendorf^1,3, and Henning M. Reimann^1
1Berlin Ultrahigh Field Facility (B.U.F.F.), Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association, Berlin, Germany, ²Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ³Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC), a joint cooperation between the Charité Medical Faculty and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association, Berlin, Germany

Identifying diagnostic biomarkers of pain is of utmost clinical importance. This is challenging since similar fMRI patterns are elicited by painful and equisalient non-painful stimuli at 3T. To decipher pain-specificity this work uses 7T high-resolution fMRI of (1) salient non-painful versus painful stimuli, (2) different types of painful stimuli in "healthy" controls versus (3) a subject with a genetically-induced pain-free phenotype. We found that canonical HRF modeling is insufficient to reliably capture the shape of elicited BOLD responses that further varied in correlation to perceived saliency.

Michela Pievani¹, Ileana O. Jelescu², Joao Jorge³, Olivier Reynaud⁴, Federica Ribaldi^1,5,6, Valentina Garibotto⁷, Giovanni B. Frisoni^1,5, and Jorge Jovicich^8
1Laboratory of Alzheimer’s Neuroimaging and Epidemiology, IRCCS Istituto Centro San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli, Brescia, Italy, ²CIBM - Center for Biomedical Imaging, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, ³Systems Division, Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM), Nêuchatel, Switzerland, ⁴Human Neuroscience Platform, Fondation Campus Biotech Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, ⁵Memory Clinic and LANVIE - Laboratory of Neuroimaging of Aging, University Hospitals and University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, ⁶Department of Molecular and Translational Medicine, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy, ⁷Division of Nuclear Medicine and NIMTlab, University Hospitals and University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, ⁸Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

The locus coeruleus (LC) is a brainstem nucleus whose functional disruption may be an early signature of Alzheimer’s disease. Potentially due to its small size, mixed results exist about its functional connectivity to core memory, attention and salience networks. This limits a baseline definition for patient studies. Here we use high-resolution high-field resting-state fMRI to investigate the pattern of LC connectivity in healthy young subjects. Preliminary findings show positive correlations with the cerebellum and the frontal cortex. The default mode and frontoparietal networks, but not the salience network, show FC with the brainstem. Data acquisition is ongoing.

Ian D Driver¹, Rosa M Sanchez Panchuelo², Olivier Mougin², Michael Asghar², James Kolasinski¹, William T Clarke³, Catarina Rua⁴, Andrew T Morgan⁵, Adrian Carpenter⁴, Keith Muir⁵, David Porter⁵, Christopher T Rodgers⁴, Stuart Clare³, Richard G Wise^1,6,7, Richard Bowtell², and Susan T Francis^2
1Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom, ²Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom, ³Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, ⁴Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, ⁵Imaging Centre of Excellence, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom, ⁶Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, "G. D’Annunzio University" of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy, ⁷Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies, "G. D’Annunzio University" of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy

This study compares within- and across-site reproducibility of 7 Tesla somatomotor fMRI using a travelling wave task to map the hand and individual digit localization at high spatial resolution. We performed a “travelling-heads” study acquiring data on Siemens Magnetom, Siemens Terra and Philips Achieva whole-body 7 Tesla MRI systems at five sites. Simple harmonization of the EPI sequence protocol was performed. We show metrics of intra- and inter-site variability of digit representations, with good reproducibility observed across sites. These results demonstrate the potential benefits of multi-site 7T fMRI studies for digit mapping where large cohorts are required.

Jonathan R. Polimeni^1,2, Olivia M. Viessmann¹, Qiyuan Tian¹, Michaël Bernier¹, Meher R. Juttukonda¹, Yi-Fen Yen¹, and David H. Salat^1,3
1Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States, ²Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, ³Neuroimaging Research for Veterans Center, VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, United States

Previous studies have reported an orientation effect in DSC data within the white matter in which CBV estimates vary systematically with the orientation of local fiber orientation. Other studies have reported similar orientation effects in BOLD fMRI data both with respect to white-matter fiber orientation and gray-matter cortical orientation. Here we extend these findings by investigating orientation effects in gray and white matter in DSC-based CBV estimates. We find strong effects in both brain regions consistent with both groups of prior studies, corroborating previous interpretations that the observed BOLD effects in the white matter are vascular in origin.

An Thanh Vu^1,2, Alexander JS Beckett^3,4, Jennifer Townsend^3,4, Salvatore Torrisi^3,4, and David Feinberg^3,4
1Radiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, ²San Francisco Veteran Affairs Health Care System, San Francisco, CA, United States, ³Advanced MRI Technologies, Sebastopol, CA, United States, ⁴Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States

In this 7T study, we investigate the constructive combination of the BOLD and CBV weighted timeseries of EPI and GRASE based Vascular Space Occupancy (VASO) sequences for enhanced fMRI CNR. Activations from this BOLD+CBV combination resulted in 9% greater t-values as well as, on average, 39% more above-threshold voxels, relative to traditional BOLD. Although this combination method resulted in reduced microvascular specificity for EPI based VASO, for GRASE based VASO, the middle layers were predominantly enhanced, suggesting minimal loss in specificity. Advantageously, this technique does not require re-acquisition of data or modifications to pulse sequence parameters of the VASO sequence.

Jurjen Heij¹, Luisa Raimondo¹, Jeroen C.W. Siero^1,2, Serge O Dumoulin^1,3, Wietske van der Zwaag¹, and Tomas Knapen^1,3
1Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ²Radiology, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands, ³Experimental and Applied Psychology, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Seong Dae Dae Yun¹, Patricia Pais-Roldán¹, Nicola Palomero-Gallagher^2,3,4, and N. Jon Shah^1,5,6,7
1Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine 4, INM-4, Forschungszentrum Juelich, Juelich, Germany, ²Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine 1, INM-1, Forschungszentrum Juelich, Juelich, Germany, ³C. & O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research, Heinrich-Heine-University, Duesseldorf, Germany, ⁴Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany, ⁵Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine 11, INM-11, JARA, Forschungszentrum Juelich, Juelich, Germany, ⁶JARA - BRAIN - Translational Medicine, Aachen, Germany, ⁷Department of Neurology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

Mapping of resting-state networks has been performed in numerous studies to investigate overall brain function and its underlying connectivity. However, attempts to acquire resting-state fMRI data with high spatial resolution have been hampered by the current technical limitations. The spatial resolution from recent submillimetre-resolution fMRI studies still remains around 0.7 × 0.7 × 0.7 mm³, with only partial brain coverage. This work employs a novel high-resolution fMRI method, TR-external EPIK, to perform resting-state fMRI with half-millimetre in-plane resolution and whole-brain coverage at 7T. Various resting-state networks over the whole-brain have been identified with high mapping fidelity onto the cortical ribbon.

Luca Vizioli^1,2, Logan T Dowdle¹, Steen Moeller¹, Essa Yacoub¹, and Kamil Ugurbil^1
1CMRR, University of Minnesota, minneapolis, MN, United States, ²Department of Neurosurgery, University Of Minnesota, minneapolis, MN, United States

The goal of 0.1μL voxel resolution for human fMRI set by the BRAIN Initiative has thus far been nearly impossible to reach, due to the overwhelming thermal noise contribution at such high spatial resolutions. Here we show that, with the recently developed denoising algorithm NORDIC, we are able to achieve robust functional activation to visual stimuli at 0.5 mm isotropic (0.125μL) voxel resolution at 7T field strengths with only 20 minutes of data, a results that is unobtainable with conventional data reconstruction. Preliminary layer findings show a central peak, suggesting that this may dramatically improve quantification of depth-dependent activation profiles.

Luisa Raimondo¹, Jurjen Heij¹, Tomas Knapen^1,2, Serge O. Dumoulin^1,3, Jeroen C.W. Siero^1,4, and Wietske van der Zwaag^1
1Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ²VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ³Experimental and Applied Psychology, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ⁴Radiology, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands

We present multi-echo line-scanning fMRI results in humans. The potential of this technique lies in the combination of both high spatial and temporal resolution while sacrificing spatial coverage outside the region of interest. We reached a 250 μm resolution along the line direction with a temporal resolution of ~100 ms. We compared BOLD sensitivity and tSNR of 5 different multi-echo acquisitions to select the optimal protocol, and three methods for echo combination. Although differences were small, the 5 echo protocol and tSNR-weighted combination were found to yield the highest BOLD sensitivity in a visual cortex ROI.

Hankyeol Lee¹, Seong-Gi Kim^1,2, and Kâmil Uludağ^1,2,3
1Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Institute for Basic Science, Suwon, Korea, Republic of, ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea, Republic of, ³Techna Institute & Koerner Scientist in MR Imaging, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada

Luminance-dependent laminar activation analysis in human V1 is presented. White and black dot-shaped visual stimuli were used to evoke BOLD responses in the early visual cortex. Traditional on/off block stimulation paradigm and continuous stimulation paradigm without interleaved rest periods were used. With voxel centroid mapping, where each voxel’s relative cortical depth is estimated, activation ROIs across multiple image slices and subjects can be analyzed collectively with minimum smoothing and no resampling of functional data. Results show black-dominant responses in V1, with laminar profiles from continuous stimulation emphasizing the role of middle layers by minimizing the effect of ascending vein drainage.

Baolian Yang¹, Graeme McKinnon², and Brice Fernandez^3
1MR, GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, United States, ²GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, United States, ³GE Healthcare, Buc, France

Through the optimization of simultaneous multislice (SMS) technique, a 0.8mm³ whole brain resting state fMRI data with minimum distortion was acquired to show the benefit of doing fMRI study at ultra-high field.   

Guoxiang Liu^1,2, Adnan Shah^1,2, Takashi Ueguchi^1,2, and Seiji Ogawa^1,3
1CiNet, NICT, Osaka, Japan, ²Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, ³Tohoku Fukushi University, Sendai, Japan

Shot-wise separate motion correction is presented for BISEPI (Block-Interleaved Segmented EPI)-based high-resolution fMRI at 7T. Artifacts caused by subject motion during longer acquisition time of one volume than normal multi-shot EPI reduces the performance of BISEPI. The proposed k-space motion correction (KMoCo) method calculates and corrects the motion during the shot-wise acquisition of each volume separately. We also performed ICA denoising on the KMoCo data. The proposed method improves temporal SNR, the number of detected active voxels, and localization of brain activity in high-resolution fMRI at 7T