Hi all,

I am analyzing infants' fMRI data, and I would like to use the UNC template provided for neonates instead of the SPM template. I am using the following pipeline:

functional Label current functional files as "original data"
functional Realignment with correction of susceptibility distortion interactions (subject motion estimation and correction)
functional Center to (0,0,0) coordinates (translation)
functional Slice timing correction (STC; correction for inter-slice differences in acquisition time)
functional Outlier detection (ART-based identification of outlier scans for scrubbing)
structural Center to (0,0,0) coordinates (translation)
functional Indirect segmentation and MNI-space normalization (coregister functional/structural; structural segmentation & normalization; apply same deformation field to functional)
functional Label current functional files as "mni-space data"
functional Smoothing (spatial convolution with Gaussian kernel)
functional Label current functional files as "smoothed data"
and in settings, I used custom TPM for that. The preprocessing runs with no problem, and the outcomes look fine except for "QA normalization: functional data + outline of MNI TPM template (1)" and "QA normalization: structural data + outline of MNI TPM template (1)". This problem continues to denoising step, and there is a mismatch between functional data and structural data.

Can I skip MNI normalization and normalize my data into the UNC template instead?

Best,
Parinaz.