Michigan Neuroimaging Initiative

Institutional Review Board approval for fMRI studies

In 2015, changes were made to the IRB procedures so that investigators

  1. who are not affiliated with the UM Medical School, and
  2. who are running standard paradigms not involving special groups (e.g., patients, children) or other procedures (e.g., drug manipulations) that may require special consideration,

can run the behavioral portion of their studies through IRB-HSBSS, which tends to be faster and to have a better understanding of the kind of work many of us do, rather than IRBMED and to have their fMRI portion covered by the blanket protocol.

As of January, 2017, the information and forms were not easily locatable on the IRB web site. (From the top level IRB-HSBS page, find the link to Apply for IRB approval or determination of exemption, and from that page look for the Related IRB Application Procedures section (if you have a wide screen, this will appear on the right side; if you have a narrow screen, this will instead be at the bottom), where there is a link labeled fMRI Behavioral Component - Sample eResearch Application to the sample IRB application.

For convenience, we are making the necessary forms and information available here.

Information for Investigators

Blanket fMRI Laboratory Protocol

Consent to be part of a research study

Assent to be part of a research study for children ages 10–17

Parental consent for child to be part of research study

These are also available on the Functional MRI Laboratory web site under the Users tab, the the IRB Approval & Renewal menu to the left.