A Pilot Project to Investigate Continuous Performance fMRI in Normal Humans

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Van Horn will spend a year developing and validating methods and tools needed for examining continuous motor-sensory tasks performed while brain activity is monitored by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Current experimental frameworks for monitoring brain activity via fMRI during psychological tasks rely principally upon discretely presented stimulus periods or events. Such approaches are ideal for the study of perception-based cognitive processes, yet many real-world behaviors (such as motor acts) are continuous in nature, suggesting a need for new methodological frameworks designed for use with fMRI. The statistical approaches designed and applied in this project will be used to extend the continuous performance framework into a new class of fMRI paradigm. This project involves the custom design and fabrication of specialized stimulus input devices for the MR environment that will permit a continuously sampled response domain. Moreover, it involves computationally intense statistical modeling of data because the paradigms require measuring concurrent performance variables, potentially confounding variables (e.g. heart rate, respiration, eye-movements, etc.), and fMRI acquisition parameters, in order to include these in the experimental design. To examine the validity of the continuous task methodology, a variety of tasks will be studied. The techniques developed in this project will assist in developing new approaches to studying brain activation paradigms for fMRI. These new approaches emphasize dynamic aspects of brain-behavior relationships. The work in this project will facilitate the development of computational models of continuously performed psychological processes.