Fast event-related mapping of population fingertip tuning properties in human sensorimotor cortex at 7T

Abstract

The majority of fMRI studies investigating somatotopic body representations in the human cortex have used either block or phase-encoding stimulation designs. Event-related (ER) designs allow for more natural and flexible stimulation sequences, while enabling the independent estimation of responses to different body parts in the same cortical location. Here we compared an efficiency-optimized fast ER design (2s inter stimulus interval, ISI) to a slow ER design (8s ISI) for mapping fingertip voxelwise tuning properties in the sensorimotor cortex of 6 participants at 7 Tesla. The fast ER design resulted in similar, but more robust, estimates compared to the slow ER design. Concatenating the fast and slow ER data, we demonstrate in each individual brain the existence of two separate somatotopically-organized representations of the fingertips, one in S1 on the post-central gyrus and the other at the border of the motor and pre-motor cortices on the pre-central gyrus. In both post-central and pre-central representations, fingertip tuning width increases progressively, from narrowly-tuned Brodmann areas 3b and 4a respectively, towards parietal and frontal regions responding equally to all fingertips.