NIMH MEG Core Facility

National Institute Of Mental Health

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Summary Hardware: The Magnetoencephalography (MEG) Core operates a state-of-the-art 275 channel MEG system (CTF , Coluitlam, BC, Canada). A complete assortment of stimulus delivery and subject response equipment is interfaced to the MEG system. A near 100% helium recycling system was installed in November of 2020 to protect future maintenance of the MEG system against volatility in the global helium market. This extremely complex system is the first that CTF has installed and is currently undergoing repairs. We hope to have the system operating at full capacity in late FY21. The MEG Core Facility has continued its development of a novel optically pumped magnetometer (OPM) system. With a combination of IRP and Brain Initiative funding (ZIA MH-0002975) we have acquired 64 sensors, with which we plan to build a 56 channel array and three reference sensors (with additional spare sensors for redundancy). We have an ongoing collaboration with George Dold and the Section on Instrumentation, they have constructed a calibration device and a 16 channel fixture, and we are currently working with them to design the full 56 channel fixture. Software: A variety of software for data analysis is maintained and supported by the Core. These include proprietary CTF code, beamformer source reconstruction software (the SAM suite) written in-house, and MNE-python. We also provide support for non-MEG specific software packages that these programs interface with, such as FreeSurfer and AFNI. In addition, the MEG Core Facility frequently writes custom scripts to integrate stimulus and response data with the MEG dataset. To supplement the SAM software suite, the MEG Core Facility has begun writing a modularized set of python scripts to automate all states of MEG data pre-processing and analysis. Due to the modular nature of these scripts, they can rapidly be customized for new studies. The MEG Core Facility has been implementing these scripts using data acquired as part of the NIMH research volunteer study (NCT03304665) and will begin working with individual Core Facility users to automate their analyses. These scripts are also being expanded to be deployed broadly across the MEG community as part of the ENIGMA project, as detailed below. The MEG Core facility continues to assist investigators in setting up MEG software and ensures that all software is available on shared resources (The NIH High Performance Computing (HPC) center). Education and Training: As noted earlier, the field of MEG is relatively small compared to the MRI community, and there are fewer well-established methods. The analysis of complex tasks designed to test innovative hypotheses requires unique approaches. The MEG Core Facility staff can leverage its wealth of experience to support and train investigators on these tasks. One-on-one training and support are provided upon request, and accounts for a significant portion of the scientific staffs time. No formal courses have been held in the MEG Core Facility in FY20 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, although we continue to offer one-on-one training. Support of the Larger MEG Community: Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we have temporarily suspended the MEG North America meeting and MEG Hackathon. As soon as it is feasible to run a meeting on the NIH campus with approximately 100 attendees, we intend to resume the meeting. To avoid overlap with the BioMag meeting, which has been delayed until fall of 2022, we anticipate holding an MEG North America meeting in the fall of 2023. As part of the NIMH protocol Recruitment and Characterization of Healthy Research Volunteers for NIMH Intramural studies (NCT03304665) we collected 68 recordings from healthy individuals on a comprehensive battery of cognitive tasks. These scans were part of a broader study collecting clinical, cognitive, and MRI data. We are currently in collaboration with the data science and sharing team to convert all data to the BIDS standard format, and we expect to have the full dataset shared on the NIH-supported OpenNeuro repository by the end of 2021. Our largest initiative in this domain has been the formation of the ENIGMA MEG working group. ENIGMA is a worldwide consortium of scientists in the domains of imaging and genomics. ENIGMA groups use meta-analysis or mega-analysis to understand how genotypes and neuroimaging phenotypes vary in health and a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders. We have recruited approximately 35 international MEG scientists to our working group. We are currently working with these groups to obtain data sharing permissions, and actively working on a processing pipeline for the data analysis. Scientific Contribution and Collaboration: The primary focus of the MEG Core Facility is to facilitate and enable the science of other NIMH investigators. However, based upon scientific interests, MEG Core Facility scientists frequently collaborate with other investigator to analyze data and test novel hypotheses. In FY20, core personnel continued to collaborate extensively with the labs of Carlos A. Zarate, Jr. (ETPB) and Karen F. Berman (CTNB) to gain insights into the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD) and schizophrenia. Details regarding these collaborations are available in the attached project bibliography. The MEG core facility has recently completed a unique project to demonstrate the ability of MEG to record activity from deep sources in the brain, carried out under NIMH protocol NCT00397111. While many investigators still believe recording from deep/subcortical sources is not feasible, through the use of a system such as the CTF system with axial gradiometers, combined with beamforming techniques, recording signals from these sources is possible. A pilot study using both reward task (which robustly activates the basal ganglia), and a fine motor control task (which activates the cerebellum) has been completed. The reward task study has now been published, and the fine motor task manuscript is in preparation. Currently, the reward task is being used by Dr. Argyris Stringaris's group in a population of depressed adolescents. In addition, we are currently developing a real-time neurofeedback task using source-localized MEG to modulate activity in the amygdala. This will be a collaboration with Dr. Carlos Zarates group. The final scientific contribution of the MEG Core Facility is the support of the work of NIH intramural scientists. A list of manuscripts acquired using the Core Facility resources appears below: Quentin R, King J-R, Sallard E, Fishman N, Thompson R. Differential brain mechanisms of selection and maintenance of information during working memory. Journal of Neuroscience 39(19):3728-3740 (2019). Buch ER, Claudino L, Quentin R, Bonstrup M, Cohen LG. Consolidation of human skill linked to waking hippocampo-neocortical replay. Cell Reports 35(10):109193 (2021).