CBV-sensitive layer-fMRI in the human auditory cortex at 7T: Challenges and capabilities

Laminar-specific fMRI with CBV-sensitive VASO is valuable for neuroscientific questions on hierarchical information processing. While VASO fMRI has already proven its utility in other brain areas, it has not yet been successfully applied in the auditory cortex due to several additional technical challenges in this region. Here, we explore multiple sequences and their effectiveness to mitigate these challenges. Our purpose is to develop an experimental setup that future neuroscientific studies can be built on. Ultimately, we found a stable parameter set for the usage of layer-fMRI VASO in the auditory cortex and validated it in a group of participants.