Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.05.20.106666v1?rss=1 Authors: Schulz, J., Fazal, Z., Metere, R., Marques, J., Norris, D. Abstract: Functional brain imaging in humans is almost exclusively performed using blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast. This typically requires a period of tens of milliseconds after excitation of the spin system to achieve maximum contrast, leading to inefficient use of acquisition time, reduced image quality, and inhomogeneous sensitivity throughout the cortex. We utilise magnetisation transfer to suppress the signal differentially from grey matter relative to blood so that the local increase in blood volume associated with brain activation (mainly occurring in the arterioles and capillaries) will increase the measured signal. Arterial blood contrast (ABC) is additive to the residual BOLD effect, but will have its maximum value at the time of excitation. We measured brain activation using combined ABC and residual BOLD contrast at different times post-excitation and compare this to standard BOLD. We conclude that using ABC and measuring shortly after excitation gives comparable sensitivity to standard BOLD but will provide greater efficiency, spatial specificity, improved image quality, and lower inter-subject variability. ABC offers new perspectives for performing functional MRI. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info