Abstract
Thousands of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have provided important insight into the human brain. However, only a handful of these studies tested infants while they were awake, because of the significant and unique methodological challenges involved. We report our efforts to address these challenges, with the goal of creating methods for awake infant fMRI that can reveal the inner workings of the developing, preverbal mind. We use these methods to collect and analyze two fMRI datasets obtained from infants during cognitive tasks, released publicly with this paper. In these datasets, we explore and evaluate data quantity and quality, task-evoked activity, and preprocessing decisions. We disseminate these methods by sharing two software packages that integrate infant-friendly cognitive tasks and eye-gaze monitoring with fMRI acquisition and analysis. These resources make fMRI a feasible and accessible technique for cognitive neuroscience in awake and behaving human infants.
Highlights
Thousands of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have provided important insight into the human brain
We describe two components of our work in awake, infant functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): First is the protocol itself, including apparatus, procedures, and algorithms used for data acquisition and analysis
Our hope is that the methods described and the code to implement them that we are releasing with this paper, will accelerate the adoption and refinement of awake infant fMRI
Summary
Thousands of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have provided important insight into the human brain. We report our efforts to address these challenges, with the goal of creating methods for awake infant fMRI that can reveal the inner workings of the developing, preverbal mind We use these methods to collect and analyze two fMRI datasets obtained from infants during cognitive tasks, released publicly with this paper. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) stands to complement these scalp-based techniques, with sensitivity throughout the whole brain (including ventral surfaces and deep brain structures) and relatively high spatial resolution that can be linked to detailed anatomy These advantages could dramatically improve our understanding of infant cognition5,6 — yet fMRI has rarely been used for this purpose. This allows the scanning environment and experimental protocols to be redesigned for infants from the ground up
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