Thank you pt and RWCox.
I "deobliqued" my EPI and then used @Align_Centers to center the EPI and the skull stripped anatomical at the center of mass before running afni_proc.py and this seems to have solved the issue. I don't think I need -giant_move or use another cost function just yet.
Are there any concerns for aligning the EPI and the anatomical before running the other preprocessing steps? I think this was suggested somewhere on the forum prior.
I am also encountering a warning message from 3dTStat : "Input dataset is not 3D+time; assuming TR=1.0". Should I be concerned? The registration and the alignment seem pretty good now.
Regards,
George