Detection of the brain response during a cognitive task using perfusion-based event-related functional MRI

Event-related (ER) fMRI has evoked great interest due to the ability to depict the dynamic features of human brain function during various cognitive tasks. Thus far, all cognitive ER-fMRI studies have been based on blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast techniques. Compared with BOLD-based fMRI techniques, perfusion-based fMRI is able to localize the region of neuronal activity more accurately. This report demonstrates, for the first time, the detection of the brain response to a cognitive task using high temporal resolution perfusion-based ER-fMRI. An English verb generation task was used in this study. Results show that perfusion-based ER-fMRI accurately depicts the activation in Broca's area. Average changes in regional relative cerebral blood flow reached a maximum value of 30.7% at approximately 6.5 s after the start of stimulation and returned to 10% of the maximum value at approximately 12.8 s. Our results show that perfusion-based ER-fMRI is a useful tool for cognitive neuroscience studies, providing comparable temporal resolution and better localization of brain function than BOLD ER-fMRI.