Mapping whole-brain auditory activation with 3T multi-echo fMRI at the group and individual-subject level

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a powerful and established tool to non-invasively probe the human auditory system. Varied blood oxygen level-dependent functional MRI (BOLD fMRI) acquisitions have been used to examine the functional roles of this system, but these acquisitions have substantial limitations, such as the need for specialized hardware and long acquisition times, and they typically rely on group averaging of activation patterns. In recent years, whole-brain multi-echo (ME) fMRI techniques have been used to reduce artifacts and scan times, map entire sensory systems, and improve sensitivity to neural activity in both resting-state and task fMRI data acquired at 3T. Combined with dense-sampling strategies, these ME techniques have facilitated "precision mapping" of neural activity in individual subjects. Thus, in this technical note we propose the use of a commonly available ME whole-brain acquisition and ME denoising approaches to examine the auditory system in both group and densely sampled single-subject datasets. Whole-brain and region-specific analyses were performed to identify auditory regions of activation. At the group level, auditory activation was identified bilaterally in cortical regions and unilaterally in cerebellar lobules VIIb/VIIIa with both analyses with ME data. Additionally, the region-specific analysis successfully identified unilateral activation in thalamic and brainstem regions. At the individual subject-level, precision mapping combined with ME denoising methods enhanced sensitivity, yielding bilateral activation in cortical, cerebellar, thalamic, and brainstem regions with both analyses. Lastly, we demonstrate the benefits of using multi-echo methods and a whole-brain precision mapping approach to better align an individual's functional response to their specific anatomy.