Mental chronometry

The first few years of fMRI were dominated by block design tasks that were essentially adapted from the PET literature. In 1995 the concept of acquiring single trials that took better advantage of fMRI's strengths was introduced. Single trials opened up the possibility of regressing fMRI timing extracted from hemodynamic responses with behavioral measures that were also acquired on a trial-by-trial basis. Utilizing the enhanced sensitivity of higher field MRI scanners, a number of us started to exploit this paradigm design to explore the temporal nature of processing in the human brain using fMRI of one to a few slices. I try to trace back the various events by which these studies came about and outline why the field stalled for almost a decade. With modern volumetric EPI techniques, there should be renewed interest in these types of studies for the study of whole brain temporal processing.

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