Jessica Schulz1,
Thomas Siegert1, Pierre-Louis Bazin1, Julian R.
Maclaren2, Michael Herbst3, Maxim Zaitsev3,
Robert Turner1
1Neurophysics,
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig,
Germany; 2Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States; 3Radiology,
University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
This study compared the rate of false positive activations in an fMRI group study with and without slice-by-slice prospective motion correction using an optical tracking system. The paradigm involved strong task-correlated motion - a major cause of false positive activations in fMRI. The number of voxels with T-values higher than 5 outside of grey matter i.e. activations that are obviously false positive - was strongly reduced using prospective motion correction. Additionally, the statistical power of the analysis increased. Therefore, we suggest that prospective correction techniques should be used whenever available.