Reproducibility of amygdala activation in facial emotion processing at 7T Abstract   Despite its importance as the prime method for noninvasive assessment of human brain function, functional MRI (fMRI) was repeatedly challenged with regards to the validity of the fMRIderived brain activation maps. Amygdala fMRI was particularly targeted, as the amygdalau0027s anatomical position in the ventral brain combined with strong magnetic field inhomogeneities and proximity to large vessels pose considerable obstacles for robust activation mapping.  In this highresolution study performed at ultrahigh field (7T) fMRI, we aimed at (1) investigating systematic replicability of amygdala grouplevel activation in response to an established emotion processing task by varying task instruction and acquisition parameters and (2) testing for intra and intersession reliability.  At grouplevel, our results show statistically significant activation in bilateral amygdala and fusiform gyrus for each of the runs acquired. In addition, while fusiform gyrus activations are consistent across runs and sessions, amygdala activation levels show habituation effects across runs. This amygdala habituation effect is replicated in a session repeated two weeks later. Varying task instruction between matching emotions and matching persons does not change amygdala activation strength. Also, comparing two acquisition protocols with repetition times of either 700xe2x80xafms or 1400xe2x80xafms did not result in statistically significant differences of activation levels.  Regarding withinsubject reliability of amygdala activation, despite considerable variance in individual habituation patterns, we report fair to good intersession reliability for the first run and excellent reliability for averages over runs.  We conclude that highresolution fMRI at 7T allows for robust mapping of amygdala activation in a broad range of variations. Our results of amygdala 7T fMRI are suitable to inform methodology and may encourage future studies to continue using emotion discrimination paradigms in clinical and nonclinical applications.

Just a very expensive breathing training? Risk of respiratory artefacts in functional connectivitybased realtime fMRI neurofeedback Abstract   Realtime functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback (rtfMRI NFB) is a promising method for targeted regulation of pathological brain processes in mental disorders. But most NFB approaches so far have used relatively restricted regional activation as a target, which might not address the complexity of the underlying network changes. Aiming towards advancing novel treatment tools for disorders like schizophrenia, we developed a largescale network functional connectivitybased rtfMRI NFB approach targeting dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex connectivity with the striatum.  In a doubleblind randomized yokecontrolled singlesession feasibility study with Nxe2x80xafxe2x80xaf38 healthy controls, we identified strong associations between our connectivity estimates and physiological parameters reflecting the rate and regularity of breathing. These undesired artefacts are especially detrimental in rtfMRI NFB, where the same data serves as an online feedback signal and offline analysis target.  To evaluate ways to control for the identified respiratory artefacts, we compared modelbased physiological nuisance regression and global signal regression (GSR) and found that GSR was the most effective method in our data.  Our results strongly emphasize the need to control for physiological artefacts in connectivitybased rtfMRI NFB approaches and suggest that GSR might be a useful method for online data correction for respiratory artefacts.