Magnetic resonance imaging was performed using a 1.5 T Siemens Magnetom Vision Scanner with a standard quadrature head coil. Functional images were acquired by means of T2*-weighted echo planar imaging (EPI) free induction decay (FID) sequences with the following parameters: TE 60 ms, matrix size 64×64, FOV 256 mm, in-plane voxel size 4 mm×4 mm, flip angle 90°, slice thickness 7 mm and no gap. Each fMRI volume, acquired with a volume TR of 2500 ms and a scan time of 1620 ms, consisted of 16 bicommissural slices. After the functional study, a high resolution structural volume was acquired via a 3D MPRAGE sequence (sagittal slices, matrix 256×256, FOV 256 mm, slice thickness 1 mm, no gap, in-plane voxel size 1 mm×1 mm, flip angle 12°, TR=9.7 ms, TE=4 ms) in order to provide the anatomical reference for the functional scan.
