Clinical fMRI at 3 Tesla with reproducible and standardised tactile stimulation

Objective: Standardized tactile stimulation of fingers and lips in order to localize the primary (SI) and secondary (SII) somatosensory cortex can be used for various purposes, such as presurgical identification of these important brain areas in patients with cerebral tumors as well as in clinical studies with patients with different diseases and healthy volunteers. Standardized and reproducible stimulation and an optimized block design paradigm are important prerequisites for robust localization of SI and SII in clinical context. Methods: We used a 3 Tesla Siemens Trio MR scanner to perform fMRI measurements in…