Abstract
The purpose of the present study was the investigation of interaction effects between functional MRI scanner noise and affective neural processes. Stimuli comprised of psychoacoustically balanced musical pieces, expressing three different emotions (fear, neutral, joy). Participants (N=34, 19 female) were split into two groups, one subjected to continuous scanning and another subjected to sparse temporal scanning that features decreased scanner noise. Tests for interaction effects between scanning group (sparse/quieter vs continuous/noisier) and emotion (fear, neutral, joy) were performed. Results revealed interactions between the affective expression of stimuli and scanning group localized in bilateral auditory cortex, insula and visual cortex (calcarine sulcus). Post-hoc comparisons revealed that during sparse scanning, but not during continuous scanning, BOLD signals were significantly stronger for joy than for fear, as well as stronger for fear than for neutral in bilateral auditory cortex. During continuous scanning, but not during sparse scanning, BOLD signals were significantly stronger for joy than for neutral in the left auditory cortex and for joy than for fear in the calcarine sulcus. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to show a statistical interaction effect between scanner noise and affective processes and extends evidence suggesting scanner noise to be an important factor in functional MRI research that can affect and distort affective brain processes.
Highlights
The increasing interest of the neuroscientific community in applying research findings towards the development of clinical applications to complement diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical praxis makes the issue of scanner noise pressing
The rapid changes of the magnetic forces cause magnetic elements of the apparatus to expand and contract in fast frequencies, resulting in a repetitive audibly loud sound, the scanner noise, which compromises the conditions of measurement [11] and constitutes a disadvantage of functional MRI (fMRI) compared to positron emission tomography, magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography
The present study aims to investigate the possible existence of brain regions where the pattern of affective responses can be altered or even reversed due to scanner noise
Summary
The increasing interest of the neuroscientific community in applying research findings towards the development of clinical applications to complement diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical praxis makes the issue of scanner noise pressing. An extensive review [1] highlighted that the interference of scanner noise on normal brain function can be pronounced during cognitive task performance in neurodegenerative and psychopathological populations, which have greater difficulty in attending to task-related stimuli [2,3]. Functional mapping is complicated by the fact that when improving resolution, by means of increasing the strength of the magnetic field utilized during imaging, the intensity of scanner noise increases, thereby compromising progress in resolution by the increased noise interference [8,9]. The rapid changes of the magnetic forces cause magnetic elements of the apparatus to expand and contract in fast frequencies, resulting in a repetitive audibly loud sound, the scanner noise, which compromises the conditions of measurement [11] and constitutes a disadvantage of fMRI compared to positron emission tomography, magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography. The scanner noise is acting as a nuisance stimulus with undesirable effects, such as raising the baseline neural
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