64. Gareth Barnes: MEG, OPM-MEG and the beauty of tinkering

Nov 17, 2022

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Gareth Barnes is a professor at University College London, where he is Head of Magnetoencephalography. We talk about how Gareth randomly stumbled into working on MEG, what MEG is, and some of his recent projects, including the exciting new generation of MEG scanners: OPM-MEG.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes appear roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).

Timestamps
0:00:03: How I found out about Gareth's work
0:02:31: What is MEG?
0:07:04: Flexible headcasts for MEG
0:19:49: How Gareth accidentally started working on MEG (after writing fiction in France)
0:28:46: The early days of MEG at Aston University (starting with a single channel)
0:40:58: The new generation of MEG: Optically pumped magnetometers (OPM-MEG)
1:13:33: Mouth MEG and measuring hippocampus with MEG
1:21:06: The relationship between methods development and discovery in basic science

Podcast links

Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Gareth's links

Website: https://geni.us/barnes-web
Google Scholar: https://geni.us/barnes-scholar

Ben's links

Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

Links
MEG in the UK: https://meguk.ac.uk/
MEG image: https://biomaglaboratory.fi/wp-content/themes/biomagille/images/meg_image_20210422b.jpg
Cerca MEG: https://www.cercamagnetics.com/
Fieldline MEG: https://fieldlineinc.com/
Young Epilepsy: https://www.youngepilepsy.org.uk/
Sphenoidal electrodes: https://www.epilepsybehavior.com/article/S1525-5050(03)00023-4/fulltext

References
Boto, ... & Brookes (2018). Moving magnetoencephalography towards real-world applications with a wearable system. Nature.
Boto, ... & Brookes (2019). Wearable neuroimaging: Combining and contrasting magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography. NeuroImage.
Hill, ... & Brookes (2019). A tool for functional brain imaging with lifespan compliance. Nature Communications.
Meyer, ... & Barnes (2017). Flexible head-casts for high spatial precision MEG. Journal of neuroscience methods.
Sander, ... & Knappe (2012). Magnetoencephalography with a chip-scale atomic magnetometer. Biomedical optics express.
Seymour, ... & Maguire (2021). Using OPMs to measure neural activity in standing, mobile participants. NeuroImage.
Stangl, ... & Suthana (2021). Boundary-anchored neural mechanisms of location-encoding for self and others. Nature.
Tierney, ... & Barnes (2019). Optically pumped magnetometers: From quantum origins to multi-channel magnetoencephalography. NeuroImage.
Tierney, ... & Barnes (2021). Mouth magnetoencephalography: A unique perspective on the human hippocampus. NeuroImage.
Vivekananda, ... & Walker (2020). Optically pumped magnetoencephalography in epilepsy. Annals of clinical and translational neurology.