Ocular Dominance in Human V1 Demonstrated by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

1997 ◽  
Vol 77 (5) ◽  
pp. 2780-2787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi S. Menon ◽  
Seiji Ogawa ◽  
John P. Strupp ◽  
Kâmil Uǧurbil

Menon, Ravi S., Seiji Ogawa, John P. Strupp, and Kâmil Uǧurbil. Ocular dominance in human V1 demonstrated by functional magnetic resonance imaging. J. Neurophysiol. 77: 2780–2787, 1997. Very high resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at a 4 Tesla (T) magnetic field was used to map ocular dominance regions in the human visual cortical layers using the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) contrast mechanism. The fMRI response from primary visual cortex (V1) exhibited a distribution of ocular dominance reminiscent of the single-cell recordings of Hubel and Wiesel. Pixels could be grouped into seven categories varying from left-only response to binocular-only response to right-only responses. Nonspecific responses were found in the MRI-visible draining veins as well as in the parenchyma. Although large vessel BOLD signals are easily detectable, regardless of field strength, they demonstrate a fMRI response to photic input that could not be used to distinguish ocular dominance. The difference in BOLD response between a region activated by one eye and that activated by the other is only 2.9% on average. This necessitates the use of a difference paradigm to visualize the regions of ocular dominance accurately. The data show that BOLD-based fMRI is sensitive to neuronal activity in cortical columns when using differential techniques, opening up the possibility of mapping specialized populations of neurons in humans that are not accessible to electrophysiological or other methods of invasive mapping.

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. Willoughby ◽  
Kristina Thoenes ◽  
Mark Bolding

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to estimate neuronal activity in the primary somatosensory cortex of six participants undergoing cutaneous tactile stimulation on skin areas spread across the entire body. Differences between the accepted somatotopic maps derived from Penfield's work and those generated by this fMRI study were sought, including representational transpositions or replications across the cortex. MR-safe pneumatic devices mimicking the action of a Wartenberg wheel supplied touch stimuli in eight areas. Seven were on the left side of the body: foot, lower, and upper leg, trunk beneath ribcage, anterior forearm, middle fingertip, and neck above the collarbone. The eighth area was the glabella. Activation magnitude was estimated as the maximum cross-correlation coefficient at a certain phase shift between ideal time series and measured blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) time courses on the cortical surface. Maximally correlated clusters associated with each cutaneous area were calculated, and cortical magnification factors were estimated. Activity correlated to lower limb stimulation was observed in the paracentral lobule and superomedial postcentral region. Correlations to upper extremity stimulation were observed in the postcentral area adjacent to the motor hand knob. Activity correlated to trunk, face and neck stimulation was localized in the superomedial one-third of the postcentral region, which differed from Penfield's cortical homunculus.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei Huang ◽  
Johan D. Carlin ◽  
Richard N. Henson ◽  
Marta M. Correia

AbstractUltra-high field functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has allowed us to acquire images with submillimetre voxels. However, in order to interpret the data clearly, we need to accurately correct head motion and the resultant distortions. Here, we present a novel application of Boundary Based Registration (BBR) to realign functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data and evaluate its effectiveness on a set of 7T submillimetre data, as well as millimetre 3T data for comparison. BBR utilizes the boundary information from high contrast present in structural data to drive registration of functional data to the structural data. In our application, we realign each functional volume individually to the structural data, effectively realigning them to each other. In addition, this realignment method removes the need for a secondary aligning of functional data to structural data for purposes such as laminar segmentation or registration to data from other scanners. We demonstrate that BBR realignment outperforms standard realignment methods across a variety of data analysis methods. Further analysis shows that this benefit is an inherent property of the BBR cost function and not due to the difference in target volume. Our results show that BBR realignment is able to accurately correct head motion in 7T data and can be utilized in preprocessing pipelines to improve the quality of 7T data.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document