Multimodal Assessment of Brain Activity: Overcoming Limitations of fMRI

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Multimodal Assessment of Brain Activity: Overcoming Limitations of fMRI Arno Villringer1, 2, 3, 4*, P. Ritter3, 4, R. Becker3, 4, F. Freyer3, 4 and G. Curio3, 4 1 Department Neurology, Max Planck Institute of Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany 2 Mind&Brain Institute, Humboldt-University , Germany 3 Berlin Neuroimaging Center, Germany 4 Dept. Neurology, Charité, Germany While fMRI has become a mainstay of cognitive neuroscience, it suffers from several important shortcomings such as its poor temporal resolution, its fuzzy relationship to underlying neuronal activity, and the lack of a clear definition of baseline / background activity. Incorporating other imaging methods into the fMRI framework, may help to overcome some of the above mentioned drawbacks. Electrophysiological (EEG, MEG, TMS) and optical methods are of particular interest. In this talk, I will focus on contributions of EEG: (1) It does not rely on neurovascular coupling and its temporal resolution is on the order of milliseconds. (2) The strength of EEG rhythms in the alpha and beta frequency range, such as the occipital alpha rhythm and rolandic alpha and beta rhythms seems to be an interesting parameter for background activity, and (3) EEG activity in the very high frequency range, i.e. 600Hz bursts occurring with somatosensory stimulation, represent a noninvasive marker of spike bursts in human subjects. Acquiring EEG simultaneously with fMRI promises to relate these EEG measures to the simultaneously acquired BOLD signal. While not eliminating all of the above mentioned problems of sole fMRI, we and others have recently shown that combined EEG/fMRI recordings clearly improve our information on the temporal sequence of neuronal events, improve the specification of background activity, and – at least in the specific setting of somatosensory stimulation – add a "noninvasive virtual electrode" assessment of neuronal spiking to the simultaneously acquired BOLD signal in the same brain region. Conference: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bodrum, Turkey, 1 Sep - 5 Sep, 2008. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Symposium 13: Potentials and Limitations of Multi-modal Neuroimaging Citation: Villringer A, Ritter P, Becker R, Freyer F and Curio G (2008). Multimodal Assessment of Brain Activity: Overcoming Limitations of fMRI. Conference Abstract: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.01.061 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 28 Nov 2008; Published Online: 28 Nov 2008. * Correspondence: Arno Villringer, Department Neurology, Max Planck Institute of Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, arno.villringer@cbs.mpg.de Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Arno Villringer P. Ritter R. Becker F. Freyer G. Curio Google Arno Villringer P. Ritter R. Becker F. Freyer G. Curio Google Scholar Arno Villringer P. Ritter R. Becker F. Freyer G. Curio PubMed Arno Villringer P. Ritter R. Becker F. Freyer G. Curio Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.