Mapping rabbit whisker barrels using discriminant analysis of high field fMRI data

High field (> 4T) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques provide increased spatial resolution that enables the noninvasive, repeatable study of the sensory cortices at the level of their basic functional units. The examination of these units is important for studies of sensory information processing, learning- or experience-related brain plasticity, or the fundamental relationship between hemodynamic and neuronal activity. However functional units cannot always be distinguished from their surrounding areas by conventional activation mapping methods such as correlation or hypothesis tests, which only consider temporal variation within each individual voxel. We report a novel method to detect individual whisker barrels by using discriminant analysis to jointly characterize high order dependency among multiple voxels. Our results in the whisker barrel cortex of the awake rabbit indicate that the proposed method can differentiate reliably small clusters of activated voxels corresponding to individual whisker barrels within larger areas of functional activation, even in the case of adjacent whiskers in unanesthetized subjects. This method is computationally efficient, requires no specific experimental design for fMRI acquisition, and should be applicable to studies of other sensory systems.