A new setup at the University of Washington combines a cap to monitor head position (top) and the Magnetoencephalography (MEG) (bottom) lets researchers use it on infants and young children.
A maelstrom of neural connections develop in a child’s brain during the first five years of life. Understanding how interconnected circuits develop, and how babies think, could lead to a host of new insights into everything from autism to language acquisition. But gathering such information has been tricky: infants can’t be ordered to stay motionless, which is required for most advanced neuroimaging techniques. Now a system that works in concert with existing imaging machinery can account for head movement and, for the first time, let researchers see detailed activity in an active baby’s brain.
Continue reading… “Technology that Opens a Window into Babies’ Developing Brains”
