The experimental setup used for data acquisition and analysis of rat rsfMRI.

<p>(<b>A</b>) Experimental setup for fMRI data acquisition on a 470-MHz MRI using a ¹H transmit/receive head surface coil. (<b>B</b>) Processed Blood-Oxygen-level Dependent (BOLD) signals from regions of the reward system. After skull stripping, atlas registration, motion and drift correction, and intensity normalization, images were band-pass filtered between 0.01–0.1Hz. (<b>C</b>) Anatomical location of selected seed regions within the reward system that were used for cross-correlation analysis (to generate voxel-wise maps of Pearson’s r coefficient that was later z-transformed prior to group comparisons). Shown are both a standard anatomical atlas and high-resolution MRI-based atlas maps. Green arrows highlight the seed region. Overlays on the rat brain atlas show connectivity with corresponding seed regions based on Fisher’s z-transformed r coefficient values (r ≥ 0.35) [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0174774#pone.0174774.ref029" target="_blank">29</a>].