Spatial heterogeneity of the nonlinear dynamics in the FMRI BOLD response

Recent studies of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal responses averaged over a region of interest have demonstrated that the response is nonlinear with respect to stimulus duration. Specifically, shorter duration stimuli produce signal changes larger than expected from a linear system. The focus of this study is to characterize the spatial heterogeneity of this nonlinear effect. A series of MR images of the visual and motor cortexes were acquired during visual stimulation and finger tapping, respectively, at five different stimulus durations (SD). The nonlinearity was assessed by fitting ideal linear responses to the responses at each SD. This amplitude, which is constant for different SD in a linear system, was normalized by the amplitude of the response to a blocked design, thus describing the amount by which the stimulus is larger than predicted from a linear extrapolation of the response to the long duration stimulus. The amplitude of the BOLD response showed a nonlinear behavior that varied considerably and consistently over space, ranging from almost linear to 10 times larger than a linear prediction at short SD. In the motor cortex different nonlinear behavior was found in the primary and supplementary motor cortexes.