A Pilot Project to Investigate Continuous Performance fMRI in Normal Humans

在国家科学基金会的支持下，范霍恩博士将花一年时间开发和验证检查连续运动感觉任务所需的方法和工具，同时通过功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）监测大脑活动。 目前的实验框架，通过功能磁共振成像监测大脑活动在心理任务主要依赖于离散呈现的刺激周期或事件。 这种方法是研究基于感知的认知过程的理想方法，但许多现实世界的行为（如运动行为）在本质上是连续的，这表明需要设计用于fMRI的新方法框架。本计画所设计与应用的统计方法将被用来将连续表现架构延伸为一种新的功能性磁振造影范例。 该项目涉及MR环境的专用刺激输入设备的定制设计和制造，该设备将允许连续采样响应域。 此外，它涉及数据的计算密集型统计建模，因为范例需要测量并发性能变量，潜在的混淆变量（例如心率，呼吸，眼球运动等），和fMRI采集参数，以便将这些纳入实验设计中。 为了检验连续任务方法的有效性，将研究各种任务。在这个项目中开发的技术将有助于开发新的方法来研究脑激活范式的功能磁共振成像。 这些新方法强调大脑-行为关系的动态方面。 这个项目的工作将促进持续进行的心理过程的计算模型的发展。

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.