PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Guo-Rong Wu
AU  - Daniele Marinazzo
TI  - Hemodynamic response function in resting brain: disambiguating neural events and autonomic effects
AID  - 10.1101/028514
DP  - 2015 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 028514
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/10/06/028514.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/10/06/028514.full
AB  - It has been shown that resting state brain dynamics can be characterized by looking at sparse blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) events, which can be retrieved by point process analysis. Cardiac activity can also induce changes in the BOLD signal, thus affect both the number of these events and the mapping between neural events and BOLD signal, namely the hemodynamic response. To isolate neural activity and autonomic effects, we compare the resting state hemodynamic response retrieved by means of a point process analysis with and without deconvolving the cardiac fluctuations. Brainstem and the surrounding cortical area (such as precuneus, insula etc.) are found to be significantly affected by cardiac pulses. Methodological and physiological implications are then discussed.