For fMRI specifically, the haemodynamic response is assumed to last over 10 seconds, rising multiplicatively (that is, as a proportion of current value), peaking at 4 to 6 seconds, and then falling multiplicatively. Changes in the blood-flow system, the vascular system, integrate responses to neuronal activity over time. Because this response is a smooth continuous function, sampling with faster TRs helps only to map faster fluctuations like respiratory and heart rate signals. While fMRI strives to measure the neuronal activity in the brain, the BOLD signal can be influenced by many other physiological factors other than neuronal activity. For example, respiratory fluctuations and cardiovascular cycles affect the BOLD signal being measured in the brain and therefore are usually tried to be removed during processing of the raw fMRI data. Due to these sources of noise, there have been many experts who have approached the idea of resting state fMRI very skeptically during the early uses of fMRI. It has only been very recently that researchers have become confident that the signal being measured is not an artifact caused by other physiological function. Resting state functional connectivity between spatially distinct brain regions reflects the repeated history of co-activation patterns within these regions, thereby serving as a measure of plasticity. Bharat Biswal  Marcus Raichle  Functional connectivity is the connectivity between brain regions that share functional properties. More specifically, it can be defined as the temporal correlation between spatially remote neurophysiological events, expressed as deviation from statistical independence across these events in distributed neuronal groups and areas. This applies to both resting state and task-state studies. While functional connectivity can refer to correlations across subjects, runs, blocks, trials, or individual time points, resting state functional connectivity focuses on connectivity assessed across individual BOLD time points during resting conditions. Functional connectivity has also been evaluated using the perfusion time series sampled with arterial spin labeled perfusion fMRI. Functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI), which can include resting state fMRI and task-based MRI, might someday help provide more definitive diagnoses for mental health disorders such as bipolar disorder and may also aid in understanding the development and progression of post-traumatic stress disorder as well as evaluate the effect of treatment. Functional connectivity has been suggested to be an expression of the network behavior underlying high level cognitive function partially because unlike structural connectivity, functional connectivity often changes on the order of seconds as in the case of dynamic functional connectivity. Default mode network  Other resting state networks  Many programs exist for the processing and analyzing of resting state fMRI data.