Laminar-Specific Fingerprints of Different Sensorimotor Areas Obtained During Imagined and Actual Finger Tapping

Robert Trampel¹, Pierre-Louis Bazin¹, Andreas Schfer¹, Robin Martin Heidemann¹, Dimo Ivanov¹, Gabriele Lohmann¹, Stefan Geyer¹, Robert Turner¹

The time course of the BOLD response to a specific task differs across brain areas, giving rise to localized activations. Recent progress in ultra-high resolution fMRI makes it possible additionally to compare the BOLD signal at different cortical depths, giving a more detailed picture of the functional fingerprint of any particular cortical area. We performed fMRI at 7 Tesla with sub-millimeter resolution during imagined and actual finger tapping. The relative BOLD signal time course was observed to vary not only across sensorimotor cortical areas but also between cortical depths within each area.