LSA Fellows 5

This project aims at establishing cutting-edge methods in brain research, at making them easily accessible for clinical research and diagnostics and at developing a technical solution for later commercial use. In particular, I will focus on the combined application of two well-known methods to investigate neuronal activity: Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). EEG is known for its high temporal precision and fMRI for its high spatial precision. Hence, combined EEG-fMRI experiments have the advantage of high spatial and temporal precision for characterizing the spatiotemporal profile of neuronal activity.

However, collecting EEG data in a MRI scanner results in interference signals in addition to the the EEG signal.

In this project I will develop a new, high-resolution method to eliminate the interference signal by placing a carbon-wire loop (CWL) directly on top of each EEG electrode. The CWL picks up only interference signals, while the adjacent EEG electrode measures both interference signals and neural activity. By subtracting the interference signal, only neuronal activity should be left in signal picked up by the EEG electrode. This approach will dramatically reduce the misinterpretation of the data due to residual interference signals.

Finally, the method itself holds great potential for applied clinical research (e.g. localizing neural origin of epileptic seizures and comparing memory consolidation between healthy participants and Alzheimer’s patients). For this reason it is critical to extend this method in a way that makes it routinely applicable for clinical purposes and the scientific community in Magdeburg and beyond.