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BOLD and spiking activity

Nature Neuroscience volume 11, pages 523–524 (2008)Cite this article

A Correspondence to this article was published on 01 May 2008

To the editor:

Viswanathan and Freeman1 claim that oxygen concentration and, by inference, blood oxygen level–dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reflect synaptic activity more than spiking activity. As this is a fundamental and controversial issue in fMRI research, this claim, if incorrect, may erroneously bias the interpretation of a large body of data.

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Figure 1

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

    Yuval Nir & Rafael Malach

  2. Center for Neural Science, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, 10003, New York, USA

    Ilan Dinstein & David J Heeger

  3. Department of Psychology, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, New York, 10003, USA

    David J Heeger

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  1. Yuval Nir
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  2. Ilan Dinstein
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  3. Rafael Malach
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  4. David J Heeger
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Nir, Y., Dinstein, I., Malach, R. et al. BOLD and spiking activity. Nat Neurosci 11, 523–524 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0508-523

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