Experiments were conducted on a 90-cm bore whole body 7 Tesla magnet interfaced with a Varian (Freemont, CA) console. Using a quadrature surface coil sensitive to the occipital cortex, a sagittal slice, 6 mm away from the midline, is selected. An IR prepared Turbo-FLASH sequence (matrix: 256x256, TI: 1.4 s, FOV: 20x20 cm’, slice thickness: 5 mm) was used to obtain an anatomic image of the slice. For fMRI studies, a T2*-weighted EPI sequence (matrix: 64x64 matrix, FOV: 2Ox2Ocm*, TR: 0.4 s, TE: 15 msec, slice thickness: 5mm, and an average flip angle of 30’) with half-Fourier acquisition was used. During the fMlU data acquisition, the subject’s respiration and heartbeat were monitored for subsequent removal of physiological noise. Four subjects participated in this study, with proper written consent and institutional approval. Two to 4 runs were performed in each subject and each run consisted of an initial baseline of 100 images and 4 epochs, each lasting 50 s. In each epoch, the visual stimulus (red LED goggles flashing at 8 Hz), synchronized with the scanner, was turned on for 4 s and off in the rest of the epoch. The acquired fMlU data were preprocessed for