Clinical applications of magnetoencephalography

Abstract

Magnetoencephalography (MEG), in which magnetic fields generated by brain activity are recorded outside of the head, is now in routine clinical practice throughout the world. MEG has become a recognized and vital part of the presurgical evaluation of patients with epilepsy and patients with brain tumors. We review investigations that show an improvement in the postsurgical outcomes of patients with epilepsy by localizing epileptic discharges. We also describe the most common clinical MEG applications that affect the management of patients, and discuss some applications that are close to having a clinical impact on patients.

Practical Aspects of Running Developmental Studies in the MEG

“…It offers excellent spatial localization as well as high temporal resolution of neural events. MEG is gaining credibility in the clinical setting as a pre-surgical functional mapping tool (for reviews, see [48][49]) and is establishing itself as a valuable tool for cognitive neuroscience studies (for a review, see [20]). Similar to other popular non-invasive functional neuroimaging modalities (i.e., fMRI and EEG/ERP), MEG has no harmful effects, no side effects, and no long-term detrimental effects.…”

Accessing and Processing MEG Signals in Real-Time: Emerging Applications and Enabling Technologies

“…MEG has also received increasing acceptance as a superb non-invasive tool for localizing eloquent cortices in presurgical www.intechopen.com functional brain mapping in patients with tumors and other operable lesions (Burgess, Barkley, et al 2011). Further efforts of the MEG community are focused on establishing new clinical indications where dementia (Zamrini et al 2011), traumatic brain injury (TBI) (Huang et al 2009;Maruta et al 2010) and autism (Roberts et al 2011;Roberts et al 2010) are considered current front runners among many other neurologic and psychiatric disorders that are being studied (Stufflebeam et al 2009;C. Stam 2010).…”

Magnetoencephalography in the study of brain dynamics

“…Additionally, the spatial consistency of MEG power modulations and BOLD activity made it possible to investigate the near-miss effect, which is a marker of pathological gambling in pathological and non-pathological gamblers (Dymond et al, 2014). Finally, MEG has also proven to be useful in clinical studies, see Stufflebeam et al (2009) for a review. The most important clinical results obtained using MEG derive from the detection and localization of pathological activity in patients with epilepsy, as well as from surgical planning in patients with brain tumors.…”