Chapter 7: Self-assessment Questions

1. What are the disadvantages of high spatial resolution in fMRI?
2. What are partial volume effects?
3. What are large vessel effects, and why do they matter for fMRI?
4. What factors beside voxel size influence spatial resolution in fMRI?
5. What happens to estimates of the hemodynamic response as repetition time (TR) is reduced from very long (i.e., 4s) to very short (i.e., 500ms)?
6. Is there a preferred TR for fMRI? Does this depend on whether the design is event-related or blocked?
7. What are the disadvantages of high temporal resolution in fMRI?
8. What is interleaved stimulus presentation? (Note: not interleaved slice acquisition)
9. Which is easier to study using fMRI, absolute event timing or relative event timing? Why?
10. How small of event timing differences have been measured using fMRI? What are some caveats for such studies?
11. Name and define the two properties of a linear system.
12. How well is the fMRI response to a long-duration stimulus (e.g., 12s) predicted by that to a short-duration stimulus (e.g., 3s)?
13. Why did Dale and Buckner describe the fMRI response as roughly linear?
14. What are the characteristics of the fMRI refractory period? How long does it last? How are responses to subsequent stimuli changed in latency and amplitude?
15. How might one use the refractory effect to study neuronal adaptation? What information do these sorts of studies provide about brain function?