Claudine Gauthier1,2, Ccile Madjar2, Oury Monchi2,3, Julien Doyon2,4, Richard D. Hoge1,2
1Department of Physiology, Universit de Montral, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 2Unit de Neuroimagerie Fonctionnelle, Institut universitaire de griatrie de Montral, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 3Department of Radiology, Universit de Montral, Canada; 4Department of Psychology, Universit de Montral, Canada
There comes a time in the lifecycle of an MRI research center when major scanner hardware and software upgrades become necessary. Scanner hardware upgrades, while greatly desirable for the increased capabilities they bring, may pose problems for ongoing functional MRI studies. To assess BOLD sensitivity under conditions of high and low SNR, we acquired at two different spatial resolutions (2x2x2mm and 4x4x4mm) with visual stimulation. Overall, results show no significant differences before and after the upgrade. This likely reflects the fact that our experiments were dominated by physiological as opposed to instrumental noise.