Potential of diffusion fMRI for detecting white matter activity in the human brain

Diffusion functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dFMRI) may be used to study the white matter activation in a more direct way than BOLD. The aim of this work is to extract the decrease in apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in the white matter observed in real data, and compare to that in a simulation of realistic axon swelling. Results suggest that the decrease is of low amplitude (<0.5%) but nonetheless detectable.