Research is a critical component of the mission of the CABMSI, and as such our site facilitates participation of all kinds, from acting as a participant in an experiment to professional training in the use of the instrument and analysis of results.
If you are interested in participating in a cognitive research experiment, contact Avniel Singh Ghuman, PhD, for further information and to be matched to an ongoing research experiment. To participate in a magnetoencephalography study, the minimum requirement is that you have no metal in your body of any kind (examples include: permanent retainers or braces, shrapnel, metal filings embedded in the eye, aneurism clip, pacemaker, etc). Depending on the experiment, other requirements may be right-handedness, native speaker of English, or falling within a certain age-bracket. If you are considering participation in an MEG study, make sure to read the Patient/Participant Expectations.
If you are a Pittsburgh-based researcher, there are many opportunities for learning available to you.
The MEG Special Interest Group, coordinated by Avniel Singh Ghuman, PhD, meets on the first Thursday of every month in PUH D145 (meeting room across the hall from the MEG center) from 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. Faculty, staff, and researchers convene at this meeting to troubleshoot the challenges of MEG and to share their research or clinical progress and findings. If you would like to be included on the mailing list for MEG SIG, email Dr. Ghuman at ghumana@upmc.edu.
Thanks to a MEG Research Seed Fund, limited funds have become available for inviting new researchers to the field of MEG. Upon approval of a submitted proposal, funding for some MEG sessions will be provided. This includes setup and experimental time, testing of your paradigm, and some assistance from the staff. To begin the process of learning about this great opportunity, please read the informative documents in the sidebar, or email Ajay Niranjan, MD, at niranjana@upmc.edu, or Avniel Singh Ghuman, PhD, at ghumana@upmc.edu.
If you are a researcher outside of Pittsburgh and still interested in getting involved, there are options for you too!
An online repository of MEG technical information resides at www.megwiki.org. This site combines information general to the use of the Elekta Neuromag system, as well as information pertaining to its use at the Pittsburgh site. Furthermore, materials explaining the theoretical background of MEG and the many ways of analyzing MEG data are available for download. This site is maintained by Erika J.C. Laing; however, it is utilized by researchers internationally, who further contribute to its content. Please feel free to check out the site and to add content of your own!
The CABMSI is a part of NIH Training Grant T90/R90 for a multimodal neuroimaging training graduate program awarded for five years starting in 2007. It includes a combination of MRI, fMRI, PET, MEG-EEG, and optical imaging. Seong-Gi Kim, Ph.D. (biophysicist, Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh) and William Eddy, Ph.D. (statistician, Carnegie Mellon University) serve as co-program directors. Participants in this program spend six weeks of their summer living in Pittsburgh while receiving hands-on, detailed training in a modality of their choice. Furthermore, the MNTP staff strives to provide additional learning opportunities that cross modalities, in the form of lectures and meetings with researchers who excel in their field, culminating in a two-day symposium that focuses on a different topic each year. The MEG section, which only accepts a maximum of two students per summer, develops a simple research topic, prepares participants and acquires participant data, performs preprocessing and coregistration to MRI images, evaluates acceptability of and averages trials, and completes source analysis in the form of dipole modeling as well as selected distributed methods (MNE, MCE). For more information on this excellent training opportunity, see their website at www.mntp.pitt.edu.