Research topics
The NIFBM (Northern Ireland Functional Brain Mapping) facility, a joint investment of £5.3M from Invest Northern Ireland (INI) and Ulster University, was established in 2014 and became operational January 2015. This state-of-the-art infrastructure is available for clinicians and researchers from inside and outside of Ulster University. Since its inception, MEG research in NIFBM has focused on multi-disciplinary and cross-functional research, with particular emphasis on the clinical studies.
Ongoing research projects include:
- Functional brain connectivity studies with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) patients.
- Single-trial visual decoding for MEG based brain-computer interface (BCI).
- EpiFASSTT: Epigenetic effects on children’s psychosocial development in a randomised trial of Folic Acid Supplementation in Second and Third Trimester of pregnancy.
- MONETA: Extraction and modelling of Alzheimer’s disease data for patient stratification: a novel integrative, multiplex network approach.
- MEG based clinical research for pre-surgical evaluation of epileptic foci.
- Magnetoencephaplography in Alzheimer’s disease.
- Brain mechanisms related to processing of numerals: A magnetoencephaplography study.
- Nutrition and the Ageing Brain: A multidisciplinary study integrating nutrition with innovative intelligent systems technologies.
- Investigating differences in the dynamic-systems structure of auditory cognition as a function of musical training.
- Discrete Emotion Recognition for Brain-Computer Interaction.
- Single-trial functional connectivity features with MEG and EEG signals: Application to imagery classification.
- Advancing MEG based Brain-Computer Interface Supported Upper Limb Post-Stroke Rehabilitation.
- Centre for Personalised Medicine: Clinical Decision Making and Patient Safety (CPM).
Research facilities and equipment
The MEG lab in the NIFBM facility at Ulster University is equipped with the latest whole head 306 channel Elekta Neuromag MEG TRIUX system, located in a large magnetically shielded room. A state-of-the-art Panasonic projection system (PT-DS12KE) is available to perform visual stimulation based studies. In addition, the facility houses software and hardware resources for providing auditory and electrical stimulations.
A description of the MEG lab setup is available at the following link: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/research/institutes/computer-science/groups/intelligent-systems-research-centre/projects.
Location
The MEG laboratory in the NIFBM facility at Ulster University is part of Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC). The research centre is located at Magee campus in the heart of beautiful historic city of Derry~Londonderry.
More information about ISRC is available at the following link: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/research/institutes/computer-science/groups/intelligent-systems-research-centre.
People
Head
Prof Girijesh Prasad
NIFBM Facility Director
Academic Investigators
Prof Liam Maguire
Executive Dean
Prof Damien Coyle
Professor of Neurotechnology
Dr Kongfatt Wong-Lin
Senior Lecturer
Prof Sonya Coleman
Professor of Vision Systems
Prof Tony Bjourson
Professor of Genomics
Affiliate Investigators & Visiting Clinical Staff
Dr Hubert Cecotti
Assistant Professor in Computer Science at California State University, Fresno
Dr Daniel Anthony [Donal] O’Driscoll
Visiting Professor at NIFBM
Core Staff
Dr Scott Yang
Research Associate in Functional Brain Mapping
Pramod Gaur
Research Assistant in Neuro-Imaging Technology
Yogesh Kumar Meena
Research Assistant in MEG/EEG Data Analysis
Dr Paul Boyce
Visiting Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Alain Desire Bigirimana
PhD Student
Dheeraj Rathee
PhD Student
Sujit Roy
PhD Student