Effect of surgical mask on fMRI signals during task and rest

Benjamin Klugah-Brown; Yue Yu; Peng Hu; Elijah Agoalikum; Congcong Liu; Xiqin Liu; Xi Yang; Yixu Zeng; Xinqi Zhou; Xin Yu; Bart Rypma; Andrew M Michael; Xiaobo Li; Benjamin Becker; Bharat Biswal

doi:10.1038/s42003-022-03908-6

Effect of surgical mask on fMRI signals during task and rest

Commun Biol. 2022 Sep 21;5(1):1004. doi: 10.1038/s42003-022-03908-6.

Authors

Benjamin Klugah-Brown¹, Yue Yu², Peng Hu², Elijah Agoalikum², Congcong Liu², Xiqin Liu², Xi Yang², Yixu Zeng², Xinqi Zhou², Xin Yu³, Bart Rypma⁴, Andrew M Michael⁵, Xiaobo Li⁶, Benjamin Becker², Bharat Biswal^{7

8}

Affiliations

¹ The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No.2006, Xiyuan Avenue, West Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu, Sichuan, 611731, China. bklugah@gmail.com.
² The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No.2006, Xiyuan Avenue, West Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu, Sichuan, 611731, China.
³ Martimos Imaging Center, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, 02129, USA.
⁴ The University of Texas at Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, GR41800 W. Campbell Road, Richardson, TX, 75080-302, USA.
⁵ Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
⁶ Department of Biomedical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA.
⁷ The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, Center for Information in Medicine, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No.2006, Xiyuan Avenue, West Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu, Sichuan, 611731, China. bbiswal@gmail.com.
⁸ Department of Biomedical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA. bbiswal@gmail.com.

Abstract

Wearing a face mask has become essential to contain the spread of COVID-19 and has become mandatory when collecting fMRI data at most research institutions. Here, we investigate the effects of wearing a surgical mask on fMRI data in n = 37 healthy participants. Activations during finger tapping, emotional face matching, working memory tasks, and rest were examined. Preliminary fMRI analyses show that despite the different mask states, resting-state signals and task activations were relatively similar. Resting-state functional connectivity showed negligible attenuation patterns in mask-on compared with mask-off. Task-based ROI analysis also demonstrated no significant difference between the two mask states under each contrast investigated. Notwithstanding the overall insignificant effects, these results indicate that wearing a face mask during fMRI has little to no significant effect on resting-state and task activations.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Brain / diagnostic imaging
COVID-19* / prevention & control
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging* / methods
Masks
Rest