Improving the sensitivity of task-related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging data using generalized canonical correlation analysisImproving the sensitivity of task-related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging data using generalized canonical correlation analysis Peer-Reviewed Journal Publication Δημοσίευση σε Περιοδικό με Κριτές 2022-08-042021enThis research has been co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union and Greek National Funds through the Operational Programme Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH – CREATE – INNOVATE (project code: T1EDK-03360).General Linear Modeling (GLM) is the most commonly used method for signal detection in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiments, despite its main limitation of not taking into consideration common spatial dependencies between voxels. Multivariate analysis methods, such as Generalized Canonical Correlation Analysis (gCCA), have been increasingly employed in fMRI data analysis, due to their ability to overcome this limitation. This study, evaluates the improvement of sensitivity of the GLM, by applying gCCA to fMRI data after standard preprocessing steps. Data from a block-design fMRI experiment was used, where 25 healthy volunteers completed two action observation tasks at 1.5T. Whole brain analysis results indicated that the application of gCCA resulted in significantly higher intensity of activation in several regions in both tasks and helped reveal activation in the primary somatosensory and ventral premotor area, theoretically known to become engaged during action observation. In subject-level ROI analyses, gCCA improved the signal to noise ratio in the averaged timeseries in each preselected ROI, and resulted in increased extent of activation, although peak intensity was considerably higher in just two of them. In conclusion, gCCA is a promising method for improving the sensitivity of conventional statistical modeling in task related fMRI experiments.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Frontiers in Human Neuroscience15Kosteletou_et_al_Front. Hum. Neurosci._15_2021.pdfChania [Greece]Library of TUC2022-08-04application/pdf5.5 MBfree Kosteletou Emmanouela Simos Panagiotis G. Kavroulakis Eleftherios Antypa Despina Maris Thomas G. Liavas Athanasios Λιαβας Αθανασιος Karakasis Paris Καρακασης Παρις Papadaki Efrosini Frontiers Media Task-related fMRI Signal sensitivity fMRI gCCA method Action observation Signal intensity