Spinal cord blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI studies [1] have begun to demonstrate convincing activation in the spinal cord gray matter for sensory and pain signals [2] and during resting state [3]. Among many challenges in spinal cord fMRI, physiological noise due to pulsating cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) surrounding the spinal cord is arguably the most detrimental to BOLD signal detection in the spinal cord. Most current spinal cord fMRI studies address the CSF signal contamination issue with image post-processing methods (e.g. regressing out CSF signal, or physiological cardiac recording). In this work, we adapt a CSF signal suppression strategy, delay alternating with nutation for tailored excitation (DANTE), to reduce CSF signal contamination in spinal cord BOLD fMRI at 7T.In the original DANTE method [4], a series of evenly-spaced low-flip-angle RF pulses was used to exert a cumulative effect on a narrow band of frequencies on-resonance. Off-resonance spins accumulate phase between pulses, interrupting the cumulative effect of the pulse train. Li et al. [5] recently introduced a motion-sensitive preparation technique based on DANTE, in which a train of low-flip angle RF pulses interleaved with gradient pulses suppresses moving spins. This method has been proven to attenuate CSF signal in the spine at 3T [6]. In this work, DANTE is combined with an echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence and applied to the cervical spinal cord at 7T.Axial gradient echo EPI was performed on a 7T whole-body scanner (Siemens) with a 4-channel Tx, 22-channel Rx array coil [7] at the C4 spinal level of one healthy adult volunteer in resting condition. TR=2100 ms, TE=23 ms, flip angle=65°, RF pulse duration=2560 µs, 100 frames, 1563 Hz/pixel, echo spacing=0.37 ms, 240 mm x 240 mm FOV, one anterior saturation band, 1.2 mm x 1.2 mm in-plane resolution, 5 mm slice thickness, GRAPPA=2, and ETL=50 (18.5 ms). A DANTE preparation block, consisting of a train of non-selective RF pulses (100 µs duration; number of pulses N_p=250, 150, 75, 40, 25, or 0 (DANTE_off); flip angle $$$\alpha$$$=5°, 10°, or 15°; phase cycle f=0°, 180°) interleaved with z-gradient pulses (G_z=20 mT/m, duration=1 ms, ramp time=200 µs), was applied before each EPI acquisition. Images within each EPI series were registered in plane using FSL/FLIRT [8] with two degrees of freedom. From each series, voxel-wise temporal SNR (tSNR = s/m) maps were calculated, and signal time-courses were extracted from regions of interest (ROIs) in the left and right spinal cord gray matter medial to the lateral horns (Fig. 1) and anterior CSF. Pearson’s correlation coefficients (r) were calculated for temporal cross-correlations between left and right gray matter and between total gray matter and CSF.Images and tSNR maps at all tested N_p and $$$\alpha$$$ are shown in Fig. 2. Surface plots of signal intensity in the spinal cord gray matter and CSF (Fig. 3) show that DANTE with 250 pulses at 15° achieves 95% suppression of CSF signal, while more conservative 150x15° and 150x10° yield 92% and 80% suppression, respectively. These three DANTE conditions, however, result in attenuation of signal in the spinal cord by 42%, 34%, and 26%, respectively. Similar decreases in gray matter tSNR (Fig. 4) were observed, although these measured decreases do not distinguish between BOLD signal and other non-BOLD contributions. Despite the moderately decreased signal intensity in the static spinal cord, the temporal cross-correlation of resting-state signal in the bilateral spinal cord gray matter (Fig. 5) improves from r=0.25 (without DANTE) to r=0.80-0.90 (with DANTE). In addition, application of DANTE (250x15°) reduces the temporal correlation of CSF versus gray matter signal significantly (from r=0.54 to r=0.08), suggesting that signal fluctuation related to the pulsating CSF was attenuated and/or removed from the gray matter by DANTE.The present results show that motion-sensitive DANTE preparation strongly suppresses signal from pulsating CSF in the cervical spine at 7T. Because DANTE also causes attenuation of signal in static tissues proportional to Np and $$$\alpha^2$$$ [5], these parameters must be selected carefully to balance CSF suppression with preservation of spinal cord signal. The strongest DANTE preparation applied in this work, 250x15°, suppressed CSF most strongly, but at an increased cost to spinal cord signal intensity and tSNR. A more moderate preparation, 150x10°, maintains effective CSF suppression (see Fig. 1), but attenuates spinal cord signal less heavily, and preserves a stronger bi-lateral correlation in gray matter signal than 250x15° (r=0.90 vs. r=0.80, respectively). In conclusion, DANTE prepared EPI with CSF-attenuation/suppression is a promising spinal cord BOLD fMRI acquisition technique at ultra-high field.