You should be able to use 3dZeropad with a negative number to remove that number of slices like this. Also 3dAutobox could be used with the -noclust option to limit a volume to only the part that contains non-zero voxels.
% 3dZeropad -I -4 -prefix anat_m4 anat+orig
% 3dinfo anat+orig |grep extent
++ 3dinfo: AFNI version=AFNI_2008_07_18_1710 (Nov 14 2008) [32-bit]
R-to-L extent: -123.629 [R] -to- 115.434 [L] -step- 0.938 mm [256 voxels]
A-to-P extent: -135.434 [A] -to- 103.628 [P] -step- 0.938 mm [256 voxels]
I-to-S extent: -62.659
-to- 84.942 [S] -step- 1.200 mm [124 voxels]
% 3dinfo anat_m4+orig | grep extent
++ 3dinfo: AFNI version=AFNI_2008_07_18_1710 (Nov 14 2008) [32-bit]
R-to-L extent: -123.629 [R] -to- 115.434 [L] -step- 0.938 mm [256 voxels]
A-to-P extent: -135.434 [A] -to- 103.628 [P] -step- 0.938 mm [256 voxels]
I-to-S extent: -57.859 -to- 84.942 [S] -step- 1.200 mm [120 voxels]