Imaging was conducted on a GE MR750 Discovery 3 Tesla system with an eight‐channel head coil. Head motion was limited by foam pads inserted between the head and the coil. Visual stimuli were viewed through a NordicNeuroLab goggle system. Non‐ferrous key pad devices interfaced with a computer recorded task performance during fMRI for off‐line analysis.
High‐resolution T1‐weighted anatomical images were acquired that maximized differentiation of the white and gray matter boundary (3D spoiled gradient‐recalled at steady state, minimum full TE, 7.8 ms TR, 600 TI, 8° flip angle, 1‐mm slices, 25.6 cm FOV). For task‐activated fMRI, echo‐planar images (EPI) were acquired in an oblique orientation (perpendicular to the anterior–posterior commissure) to minimize susceptibility artifacts, using a single‐shot, blipped, gradient‐echo, EPI pulse sequence (30.5 ms TE, 2.0 s TR, 90° flip angle, 25.6 cm FOV, 64 × 64 matrix, 37 contiguous 4 mm slices (3.75 × 3.75 × 4 mm voxel size) that provided coverage of the entire brain.
High‐resolution T1‐weighted anatomical images were acquired that maximized differentiation of the white and gray matter boundary (3D spoiled gradient‐recalled at steady state, minimum full TE, 7.8 ms TR, 600 TI, 8° flip angle, 1‐mm slices, 25.6 cm FOV). For task‐activated fMRI, echo‐planar images (EPI) were acquired in an oblique orientation (perpendicular to the anterior–posterior commissure) to minimize susceptibility artifacts, using a single‐shot, blipped, gradient‐echo, EPI pulse sequence (30.5 ms TE, 2.0 s TR, 90° flip angle, 25.6 cm FOV, 64 × 64 matrix, 37 contiguous 4 mm slices (3.75 × 3.75 × 4 mm voxel size) that provided coverage of the entire brain.