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Abstract #0169

Utilization of Binocular inhibitory Interaction for Reliable fMRI Mapping of Human Ocular Dominance Columns

Zhang N, Zhu X, Ugurbil K, Yacoub E, Chen W
University of Minnesota

A fMRI approach based on the binocular inhibition between the left-eye and right-eye ocular dominance columns (ODCs) is introduced for spatially differentiating and mapping ODCs in human brain. This approach does not require the image subtraction so that is insensitive the degree of symmetry of the BOLD activities from the neighboring ODCs. The reliability of maps generated with the proposed approach can be examined from multiple aspects: human ODC morphology, difference between high-resolution and low-resolution maps, mapping reproducibility and mapping reversibility. The results validated the proposed approach which should provide reliability and accuracy for spatially mapping the functional column structures in human brain.