Locating Brain Electrical Activity with Remarkable Accuracy

Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have developed the world's first device designed for mapping the human brain that combines whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. MEG measures the electrical function and MRI visualizes the structure of the brain. The merging of these two technologies will produce unprecedented accuracy in locating brain electrical activity non-invasively.

Transcript

00:00:02 the purpose of the project is to build a new kind of brain Imaging instrument that combines both functional and structural Imaging we are the first to to make a complete fullscale uh helmet shaped U combination of these two technologies many parts of the system uh have to be built from scratch because there are no commercially available uh

00:00:31 readily made solutions so uh this makes it a very versatile project so the idea combining these two technologies is to improve the accuracy of locating electrical activity in the brain the method is safer than conventional Highfield MRI and it can also be used with patients that have metallic or electronic implants this is useful in in several uh

00:00:58 clinical applications such as locating important areas of the brain like the motor cortex or language areas or locating epileptic activity I believe that in the future this technology will help in certain specific areas of brain disorders epilepsy and cancer