Neuroimaging

Once viewed as competing to be the best way of doing in vivo neuroscience, optical and electrical recording techniques are now being embraced as complementary methods in the quest to understand the brain.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a neuroimaging technique that peers inside the brain by detecting incredibly weak magnetic signals produced by neurons. We spoke with Dimitrios Pantazis, who is director of the MEG lab at the Institute’s Martinos Imaging Center, to find out more about this powerful technology.

In this article, we will cover the basics, strengths and limitations and applications of traditional and emerging neuroimaging techniques, and discuss the prospects, challenges, risks and ethics concerned with this rapidly expanding field.

In neuroscience research, imaging techniques are used ubiquitously to produce critical insights. Recently, sophisticated mapping, made possible by powerful elemental imaging techniques such as laser ablation (LA) in combination with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), has enabled studies of the distribution of different elements across an area of tissue.