Comparing BOLD and VASO-CBV population receptive field estimates in human visual cortex

Oliveira, Ícaro A.F.; Cai, Yuxuan; Hofstetter, Shir; Siero, Jeroen C.W.; Zwaag, Wietske van der; Dumoulin, Serge O.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118868

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…In addition, our results also showed a secondary representation of the index and thumb, positioned superior to the little finger representations (seen for participants P02-P05), as previously found by (Huber et al 2020). The VASO-CBV responses are smaller in amplitude and cluster size than the BOLD responses, as also reported previously in different VASO-CBV-BOLD comparisons (Huber et al 2020(Huber et al , 2017Oliveira et al 2022Oliveira et al , 2021.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Improved Selectivity in 7 T Digit Mapping Using VASO-CBV

Oliveira

Siero²,

Dumoulin³

et al. 2022

Brain Topogr

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Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at Ultra-high field (UHF, ≥ 7 T) benefits from significant gains in the BOLD contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and temporal signal-to-noise ratio (tSNR) compared to conventional field strengths (3 T). Although these improvements enabled researchers to study the human brain to unprecedented spatial resolution, the blood pooling effect reduces the spatial specificity of the widely-used gradient-echo BOLD acquisitions. In this context, vascular space occupancy (VASO-CBV) imaging may be advantageous since it is proposed to have a higher spatial specificity than BOLD. We hypothesized that the assumed higher specificity of VASO-CBV imaging would translate to reduced overlap in fine-scale digit representation maps compared to BOLD-based digit maps. We used sub-millimeter resolution VASO fMRI at 7 T to map VASO-CBV and BOLD responses simultaneously in the motor and somatosensory cortices during individual finger movement tasks. We assessed the cortical overlap in different ways, first by calculating similarity coefficient metrics (DICE and Jaccard) and second by calculating selectivity measures. In addition, we demonstrate a consistent topographical organization of the targeted digit representations (thumb-index-little finger) in the motor areas. We show that the VASO-CBV responses yielded less overlap between the digit clusters than BOLD, and other selectivity measures were higher for VASO-CBV too. In summary, these results were consistent across metrics and participants, confirming the higher spatial specificity of VASO-CBV compared to BOLD.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Improved Selectivity in 7 T Digit Mapping Using VASO-CBV

Oliveira

Siero²,

Dumoulin³

et al. 2022

Brain Topogr

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“…The SS-SI VASO sequence with 3D EPI readout enabled us to simultaneously acquire BOLD and VASO responses in hMT+. Therefore, we separately applied the same analysis pipeline to both VASO and BOLD fMRI data (Huber et al, 2015, 2017; Oliveira et al, 2022; Oliveira et al). In this regard, the development of new local metrics of sensitivity and specificity was pivotal to quantitatively compare and interpret results found with VASO and BOLD contrast.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More specifically, our new local metrics allow to evaluate the tuning property encoded in each voxel: if a voxel is strongly tuned to a specific condition its specificity will be high and its sensitivity will be inherited by the contrast mechanism, whereas if a voxel is poorly tuned, as in the case of a voxel sampling a big vessel, the specificity will be very low while the sensitivity will be very high. The information provided by our metrics is also used to compare results from BOLD and VASO contrast mechanisms (Huber et al, 2017(Huber et al, , 2020Oliveira et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For more precise quantification of differences between BOLD and VASO fMRI responses, we develop a voxel-wise measure of sensitivity and specificity as an extended version of the conventional global measures (Beckett et al, 2020; Huber et al, 2017). These metrics were also used to compare results from BOLD and VASO contrast mechanisms at the global level (Huber et al, 2017, 2020; Oliveira et al, 2022). Global metrics summarize the behavior of an entire region of interest, whereas our local metrics provide a functional characterization for each voxel inside a region of interest, resulting in more complete information for addressing mesoscopic questions at submillimeter resolution.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Imaging the columnar functional organization of human area MT+ to axis-of-motion stimuli using VASO at 7 Tesla

Pizzuti

Huber²,

Gulban

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Cortical columns of direction-selective neurons in the motion sensitive area (MT) have been successfully established as a microscopic feature of the neocortex in animals. The same property has been investigated at mesoscale (<1mm) in the homologous brain area (hMT+) in living humans by using ultra-high field fMRI. Despite the reproducibility of the selective response to axis-of-motion stimuli, clear quantitative evidence for the columnar organization of hMT+ is still lacking. Using cerebral blood volume (CBV)-sensitive fMRI at 7 Tesla with submillimeter resolution and high spatial specificity to microvasculature, we investigate the columnar functional organization of hMT+ (V5) in 5 participants perceiving axis-of-motion stimuli for both blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) and vascular space occupancy (VASO) contrast mechanisms provided by the used Slab-Selective Slice Inversion (SS-SI)-VASO sequence. With the development of a new searchlight-like algorithm for column detection, we provide the first quantitative columnarity map that characterizes the entire 3D hMT+ volume. We demonstrate the advantage of using CBV-sensitive fMRI to detect mesoscopic cortical features by showing, through our new voxel-wise measures of sensitivity and specificity, the higher specificity of axis-of-motion cortical columns detected by VASO compared to BOLD contrast. These voxel-wise metrics also provide further insights on how to mitigate the highly debated draining veins effect. We conclude that using CBV-VASO fMRI together with voxel-wise measurements of sensitivity, specificity and columnarity offers a promising avenue to quantify the mesoscopic organization of hMT+ with respect to axis-of-motion stimuli. Furthermore, our approach and methodological developments are generalizable and applicable to other human brain areas where similar mesoscopic research questions are addressed.

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“…Bilateral PPA and LO were defined using brain atlases ( Wang et al., 2015 ; Weiner et al., 2018 ). Bilateral V1 were defined using retinotopy maps of each participant that were previously acquired for other studies ( Harvey and Dumoulin, 2011 ; Oliveira et al., 2022 ). The retinotopy maps were analysed using the pRF method ( Dumoulin and Wandell, 2008 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%