Functional connectivity in the rat at 11.7Â T: Impact of physiological noise in resting state fMRI

►High field rsMRI data of the rat contains serious contributions of physiological noise. ►Related physiological noise contributions result in artefacts strongly affecting functional connectivity assessment from this data ►Physiological noise is largely related to respiration; cardiac contributions are negligible. ►Motion correction and subsequent regression (against motion parameters and respiration) significantly reduce artefacts and improve reproducibility of functional connectivity assessment.