Abstract #3582

The Limit of Relative Timing Accuracy of BOLD fMRI in Human Visual Cortex

Fa-Hsuan Lin^1,2, Jonathan R. Polimeni², Kevin Wen-Kai Tsai¹, Thomas Witzel², Wei-Tang Chang¹, Wen-Jui Kuo³, John W. Belliveau²

¹Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; ²Martinos Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; ³Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

BOLD-contrast fMRI has been widely considered with a poor temporal resolution. Here we investigate the limit of temporal resolution accuracy of BOLD fMRI in human visual system using magnetic resonance inverse imaging (InI) with 10 Hz volumetric sampling rate. Specifically, we interrogate if the inter-hemispheric visual cortex hemodynamic response latency can correctly follow the latency of the visual stimulation between hemifields. We also hypothesize that relative latency in the visual cortex can reliably distinguish between lateralized preceding and the delayed stimuli. Our results suggested that the relative timing accuracy of BOLD response can be as high as 100 ms.