Abstract #2774

Devlin H, Devlin J, Woolrich M, Miller K, Jezzard P

We propose an efficient method for estimating the hemodynamic response function (HRF) in event-related design. The method uses optimised basis functions to obtain subject-specific HRF estimates from functional data. We demonstrate that applying the empirically derived HRFs to an independent data set significantly increases sensitivity to BOLD activation in three brain areas compared to using a standard (non subject-specific) HRF. Because the HRF is derived from normal functional data, this increase in sensitivity is achieved without requiring additional scan time.