Detection and detrending in fMRI data analysis

This article addresses the impact that colored noise, temporal filtering, and temporal detrending have on the fMRI analysis situation. Specifically. it is shown why the detection of event-related designs benefit more from pre-whitening than blocked designs in a colored noise structure. Both theoretical and empirical results are provided. Furthermore, a novel exploratory method for producing drift models that efficiently capture trends and drifts in the fMRI data is introduced. A comparison to currently employed detrending approaches is presented. It is shown that the novel exploratory model is able to remove a major part of the slowly varying drifts that are abundant in fMRI data. The value of such a model lies in its ability to remove drift components that otherwise would have contributed to a colored noise structure in the voxel time series. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.