The fMRI blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal has specificity to detect brain activity at the columnar level. Using a 9.4T MRI system (S10 RR017799), that is shared among 12 users and was funded by the Shared Instrumentation Grant Program, researchers at Vanderbilt University demonstrated that BOLD signal is aligned spatially with the local field potential signals from multi-channel in-situ electrode array. Such arrays are considered a gold standard to measure brain activity. This work shows that the intrinsic resolution of the brain-activation signal detected by the high-field fMRI BOLD method approaches the spatial precision of invasive multi-electrode electrophysiology.
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