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Recent advances in MRI receiver and coil technologies have significantly improved image signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) and thus temporal SNR (TSNR). These gains in SNR and TSNR have allowed the detection of fMRI signal changes at higher spatial resolution and therefore have increased the potential to localize small brain structures such as cortical layers and columns. The majority of current fMRI processing strategies employ multi-subject averaging and therefore require spatial smoothing and normalization, effectively negating these gains in spatial resolution higher than about 10 mm³. Reliable detection of activation in single subjects at high resolution is becoming a more common desire among fMRI researchers who are interested in comparing individuals rather than populations. Since TSNR decreases with voxel volume, detection of activation at higher resolutions requires longer scan durations. The …