The critical relationship between the timing of stimulus presentation and data acquisition in blocked designs with fMRI

This paper concerns the experimental design and statistical models employed by fMRI activation studies which block presentation of linguistic stimuli. In particular, we note that the relationship between the timing of stimulus presentation and data acquisition can have a substantial impact on the ability to detect activations in critical language areas, even when the stimuli are presented in blocks. Using a blocked word rhyming paradigm and repeated investigations on a single subject, activation was observed in Broca's area (left inferior frontal cortex) and Wernicke's area (left posterior temporoparietal cortex) when (i) the timing of data acquisition was distributed throughout the peristimulus time and (ii) an event-related analysis was used to model the phasic nature of the hemodynamic response within each block of repeated word stimuli. In contrast, when the timing of data acquisition relative to stimulus presentation was fixed, activation was detected in Broca's area but not consistently in Wernicke's area. Our results indicate that phasic responses to stimuli occur even in a blocked design and that the sampling and proper modeling of these responses can have profound effects on their detection. Specifically, distributed sampling over peristimulus time is essential in order to detect small activations particularly when they are transient. These findings are likely to generalize to the detection of transient signals in any cognitive paradigm.