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Functional MRI of auditory verbal working memory: long-term reproducibility analysis
Xingchang Wei1, Seung-Schik Yoo, Chandlee C Dickey
1Center for Neurological Imaging, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Neuroimage
|March 10, 2004
Summary
Functional MRI (fMRI) shows reproducible verbal working memory activation with multi-subject analysis, despite individual session variability. This finding supports fMRI
Area of Science:
- Neuroimaging
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
Background:
- Functional MRI (fMRI) is a powerful tool for studying the brain, but variability in hemodynamic responses limits its application.
- Reproducibility of fMRI activation across sessions and subjects is crucial for reliable cognitive studies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the long-term reproducibility of fMRI activation during a verbal working memory (WM) task.
- To assess the variability of fMRI responses within and between subjects over time.
Main Methods:
- Eight healthy subjects performed an auditory 2-back verbal WM task repeatedly.
- fMRI data were acquired and analyzed using SPM99, generating single-session and multi-subject activation maps.
- Regions of Interest (ROIs) were defined based on Talairach coordinates for quantitative analysis.
Main Results:
- Multi-subject analysis revealed consistent activation patterns with low longitudinal variability within ROIs.
- Individual session analysis showed significant variation across sessions and subjects.
- Between-subject variability contributed more to overall variation than within-subject variability.
Conclusions:
- Multi-subject analysis of fMRI data enables reasonably reproducible activation for verbal WM paradigms.
- The reproducibility supports the use of this fMRI paradigm for evaluating cognitive changes.
- Quantifying variability components can aid in designing future fMRI studies.