Figure 1

Illustration of a local neuroactive blob (NAB) observed at cerebral cortex by fMRI experiment. Conventionally, a NAB is inferred from an fMRI data and is considered as a local neuronal activity. However this convention has not been numerically verified from fMRI physics. This paper proposes a volumetric BOLD fMRI computation model to quantitatively examine the multivoxel fMRI formation of a magnetic susceptibility expressed BOLD state under a linear NAB-modulated neurovascular coupling assumption. Simulations are rendered over a 3D cortical FOV that contains a NAB with adequate margins in an array of vasculature-laden voxels. (The image shown in Figure 1 was taken with the written consent of the subject for a separate study in our group. The image acquisition protocol was approved by the Mind Research Network review board).