In what contexts are ECG and fMRI used simultaneously?

[rwickens]

What is the research application of allowing ECG & fMRI to work in harmony?
Is the ECG done in tandem with cardiac MRI?

[rwickens]

Cool project btw!

[sangfrois]

Thanks for that super interesting question!
I will add documentation summarizing the intent of the Neuromod project, and specifying what is the interest in measuring cardiovascular activity during fMRI. But, quickly : this is not done in tandem with cardiac MRI.

Otherwise, here's why ECG and fMRI are used simultaneously:
From ecg can be extracted interbeat intervals with which we can compute heart rate variabiity (HRV). As the participant lies in the scanner (watching a movie or playing video games), we can start to relate HRV measure to the qualities of the mentioned complex stimuli. Also, as my colleagues will analyse BOLD data, we could further explore the relationship between brain dynamics /states/functions and peripheral activity. This will be really interesting, because at this point, we could appropriately describe affective states as whole-nervous-system states. I'm quite excited about that because peripheral activity is often set aside in neuroscientific models.