UC San Diego Physicist Leads $1.6 Million Magnetic Neuroimaging Research Effort

December 15, 2016

A team of physicists and engineers from four University of California campus has received $1.65 million from the University of California Multicampus Research and Programs Initiatives to develop the next generation of tools to noninvasively examine the brain with magnetic neuroimaging.

Led by former UC President Robert Dynes, a professor in the UC San Diego Department of Physics, this effort will bring together researchers from Berkeley, San Francisco, Irvine and Riverside to develop next-generation Magnetoenceptahalography (MEG) magnetic imaging instrumentation to use on the human brain.

MEG is a non-invasive neural imaging technique that directly measures the magnetic signal due to neuronal activation with high temporal resolution and spatial localization accuracy. MEG has been routinely used in localizing seizure foci in patients with epilepsy and for pre-surgical localization of brain functions.

Although the research team’s main thrust will be measuring the brain with the newly developed instruments, the scientists will also investigate biomagnetic imaging of other organs such as the heart and liver.

Dynes’ team is one of three at UC San Diego to receive University of California Multicampus Research and Programs Initiatives grants this year. A total of 15 grants were awarded system-wide. Information about UC San Diego’s other grants is available here.