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Abstract #1168

Spatial Specificity of BOLD Signal in the Spinal Cord at 7T Using a Noxious Thermal Stimulus

Alan C Seifert1,2,3 and S Johanna Vannesjo4,5
1Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States, 2Department of Radiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States, 3Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States, 4Spinal Cord Injury Center, University Hospital Balgrist, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, 5Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, FMRIB, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

BOLD signal in gradient-echo images is a combination of macrovascular and microvascular contributions, where the macrovascular component, arising from larger veins draining the activated tissue, is less specific to the site of activation. In this work, we image activation produced in the cervical spinal cord by a noxious thermal stimulus at 7T. We consistently observed activation in the dorsal white matter medial to the dorsal horn, rather than in the gray matter itself. However, due to the relatively straightforward venous architecture of the spinal cord, this observed displaced activation does remain closely related to the true site of neuronal activation.

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