The present study used a mixed fMRI design to investigate whether adoption of different retrieval orientations – as indexed by differences in the activity elicited by retrieval cues corresponding to unstudied items – is associated with differences in the state-related activity sustained across a block of test trials sharing a common retrieval goal.
These results suggest that the interleaved resting state data such as those taken from blocked or mixed blocked/event-related fMRI designs are well-suited for resting state functional connectivity analyses.
We used mixed block/event-related fMRI design to establish the neural basis for this effect.
In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess overt self-paced semantic and orthographic verbal fluency tasks performed by healthy younger and older adults within a mixed block/event-related fMRI design.
The development of the mixed block/event-related fMRI design allowed for a fuller characterization of nonlinear and time-sensitive neuronal responses: for example, the interaction between block and event related factors and the simultaneous extraction of transient activity related to trials and block transitions and sustained activity related to task-level processing.
Data from five different fMRI experiments were reanalyzed, with datasets chosen to span a range of experimental tasks (working memory, episodic memory, decision-making, and affective rating tasks), fMRI designs (event-related and mixed blocked/event-related), and stimulus modalities (words, affective pictures, faces, and numbers).
In most fMRI designs deviations from mean activation may be treated as measurement error.
The rapid, mixed-trial, event-related fMRI design was practiced by subjects once before scanning.
The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), which allows unpredictable and predictable NOGO events to be contrasted, was imaged using a mixed (block and event-related) fMRI design to examine tonic and phasic processes involved in response inhibition, error detection, conflict monitoring and sustained attention.
In this study, the neuronal correlates of adaptive and stable control processes in moderate-to-severe TBI were investigated using a continuous performance test (Conners et al. 2003) adapted for use in a mixed block- and event-related fMRI design (Olsen et al. 2013).
