Corrigendum: Cerebral Autoregulation Evidenced by Synchronized Low Frequency Oscillations in Blood Pressure and Resting-State fMRI (Frontiers in Neuroscience, (2019), 13, (433), 10.3389/fnins.2019.00433)

Abstract

In the original article, there was an error. The article describes the lag structure between mean arterial pressure (MAP) and the fMRI signal, both globally and at a voxelwise level. A sign error contained within in-house analysis code led the authors to misattribute the directionality of this lag. In the article it is implied that MAP precedes fMRI by approximately 5.5 s, whereas in fact the fMRI signal precedes the MAP signal. There is no explicit error in the original text as it only states that there is a lag in fMRI “with respect to MAP,” which in itself is unfortunately not completely unambiguous, as the precise lag/lead terminology used in the literature is not standardized. However, the authors were still laboring under a misapprehension, and thus as a result a section of the Discussion section is misleading. This error does not alter the primary scientific conclusion of this article, which is that low frequency fluctuations in fMRI are associated withmatched frequency fluctuations in MAP. However, the Discussion section includes a body of text which considers the relevance of this lag and posits some speculative physiological interpretations. As these discussion points are based on the aforementioned erroneous lag direction, they are no longer relevant to the reported results. Furthermore, there is an erroneous sentence in the Conclusion that states “fluctuations in the resting-state fMRI signal that are delayed by approximately 5.5 s,” as this use of the word delay implies MAP precedes fMRI. Finally, we correct the erroneous sentence in the Conclusion.