Comparison of Functional Activation in the Temporal Lobe of Awake and Anesthetized Monkeys

Jozien Goense¹, Hellmut Merkle², Nikos Logothetis^1,3

The fMRI response to a movie stimulus was compared in the ventral visual pathway of awake and anesthetized macaques. The ventral visual stream is essential for object recognition and memory, and in awake monkeys large swaths of the pathway are activated. In anesthetized monkeys the temporal lobe also shows large areas of activation, corresponding to the areas in awake monkeys. It is reported difficult to elicit activation beyond early sensory areas, but our results show robust activation high in the visual pathway in areas involved in object recognition. The robust activation seen here is possibly due to the higher CNR at 7T.