Spatial specificity of the functional gradient echo and spin echo BOLD signal across cortical depth at 7 T

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at high magnetic field strengths (≥ 7 T) is a promising technique to study the functioning of the human brain at the spatial scale of cortical columns and layers. However, measurements most often rely on the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response sampled with a gradient echo (GE) sequence, which is known to be most sensitive to macrovascular contributions that limit their effective spatial resolution. Alternatively, a spin echo (SE) sequence can be used to increase the weighting toward the microvasculature and, therefore, the location of neural activation. In addition, due to the heterogeneous structure of the cortical cerebrovascular system, the effective spatial resolution can change across cortical depth. For high-resolution fMRI applications, it is hence important to know how much the effective spatial resolution varies across cortical depth. In this study, we used flickering rotating wedge stimuli to induce traveling waves with varying spatial frequencies in the retinotopically organized primary visual cortex (V1), which allowed us to infer the modulation transfer function (MTF) of the BOLD response that characterizes the spatial specificity of the measured signal. We acquired GE- and SE-BOLD data at 7 T and compared the MTF between acquisition techniques at different cortical depths. Our results show a small but consistent increase in spatial specificity when using SE-BOLD. But across cortical depth, both acquisition techniques generally show a similar decrease of specificity toward the pial surface demonstrating the dependence on macrovascular contributions, which needs to be carefully considered when interpreting the results of high-resolution fMRI studies.