Neural activity with spatial and temporal correlations as a basis to simulate fMRI data

Abstract

In the development of data analysis techniques, simulation studies are constantly gaining more interest. The largest challenge in setting up a simulation study is to create realistic data. This is especially true for generating fMRI data, since there is no consensus about the biological and physical relationships underlying the BOLD signal. Most existing simulation studies start from empirically acquired resting data to obtain realistic noise and add known activity (e.g., Bianciardi et al., 2004). However, since you have no control over the noise, it is hard to use these kinds of data in simulation studies. Others use the Bloch equations to simulate fMRI data (e.g., Drobnjak et al., 2006). Even though they get realistic data, this process is very slow involving a lot of calculations which might be unnecessary in a simulation study. We propose a new basis for generating fMRI data starting from a neural activation map where the neural activity is correlated between different locations, both spatial and temporal. A biologically inspired model can then be used to simulate the BOLD respons