One of the key challenges in understanding the human brain is “bridging the gap” between the microscopic level (neurons) and the full richness of behaviour that we know humans are capable of. As well as being one of the most important and fundamental questions about ourselves, understanding brain structure and function at multiple scales is crucial for increasing our knowledge of what is going wrong in neurological and psychiatric diseases, such as Epilepsy, Schizophrenia, Depression and Alzheimer’s.
Ideally we would like to non-invasively detect the patterns of electrical activity that flow within and between brain areas as we perform various cognitive tasks. One promising technique is Magnetoencephalography (MEG), which measures the weak magnetic fields associated with neuronal electric currents. As well as being a direct window onto the brain’s electrical activity, MEG can measure activity with millisecond time-resolution, allowing us to follow the rapid sweep of electrical signals across the cortex as the brain brings various networks of areas together to process information.
The UK’s first whole-head MEG system was installed at Aston University in 2001, and over following years a further nine UK sites have opened (York, UCL, Cardiff, Nottingham, Glasgow, Oxford, Cambridge, Ulster and Birmingham). Since 2007 these sites have taken it in turns to hold an annual MEG UK meeting to help share research findings and foster links between the UK MEG research sites.
Locations of the MEG UKI sites
In 2013 these research centres were successfully awarded an MRC partnership grant entitled, “Building multi-site clinical research capacity in Magnetoencephalography (MEG)“. This funded research collaborations amongst the sites, including the creation of a database of experimental data across the ten research sites.
In 2023 it was announced that Trinity College Dublin would be acquiring the Republic of Ireland’s first MEG system and that year Trinity held the annual meeting, now expanded to include the Irish Republic and renamed MEG UKI.
This website serves to publicise the activities of the MEG UKI research sites, provide information about the annual MEG UKI meeting and to give interested parties a means to apply for access to the MEG UK database.