The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) procedure as experienced by healthy participants and stroke patients – A pilot study

We provide empirical data from our lab gained from 70 neurologically healthy mainly student subjects and from 22 mainly elderly patients suffering from motor deficits after brain damage. All participants took part in various basic research fMRI studies using a 3T MRI scanner. Directly after the scanning, all participants completed a questionnaire assessing their experience with the fMRI procedure.87.2% of the healthy subjects and 77.3% of the patients rated the MRI procedure as acceptable to comfortable. In healthy subjects, males found the procedure more comfortable, while the opposite was true for patients. 12.1% of healthy subjects considered scanning durations between 30 and 60 min as too long, while no patient considered their 30 min scanning interval as too long. 93.4% of the healthy subjects would like to participate in an fMRI study again, with a significantly lower rate for the subjects who considered the scanning as too long. Further factors, such as inclusion of a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scan, age, and study duration had no effect on the questionnaire responses. Of the few negative comments, the main issues were noise, the restriction to keep still for the whole time, and occasional feelings of dizziness.MRI scanning in the basic research setting is an acceptable procedure for elderly and patient participants as well as young healthy subjects.There has been a boom in human neuroscience studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and a number of sites introduce MRI as a new technique. Here, researchers as well as administrative personnel, such as members of ethics committees, enter a new domain in which they often have little background knowledge. Of particular importance in this context are concerns about the well being of the participants tested in the MRI machine [1-13]. The test situation may not be the most pleasant given the narrow diameter of the scanner tube, the noise of the gradient coils, and the fact that participants are asked to li