Recording brain activities in unshielded Earth's field with optically pumped atomic magnetometers
Recording brain activities in unshielded Earth's field with optically pumped atomic magnetometers
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DOI：
10.1126/sciadv.aba8792
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发表时间：
2020-06-01
期刊：
影响因子：
13.6
通讯作者：
Guo, Hong
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Zhang, Rui;Xiao, Wei;Guo, Hong
了解大脑活动和特定心理功能之间的关系对于大脑症状（如癫痫）的医学诊断非常重要。脑磁图（Magnetoencephalography，MEG）是一种非侵入性的脑活动定位方法，它利用高灵敏度的磁强计阵列记录脑内神经电流产生的磁场信号。MEG通常在磁屏蔽室中进行。本文介绍了一种基于光泵原子磁力计的无屏蔽脑磁图系统。我们建立了一个原子磁梯度仪，结合反馈方法，以减少环境磁场噪声。我们成功地观察到了与闭上眼睛有关的α节律信号和清晰的听觉诱发场信号。结合原子磁力计小型化的改进，我们的方法有希望实现一个实用的可穿戴和可移动的无屏蔽MEG系统，并为大脑症状的医学诊断带来新的见解。
Understanding the relationship between brain activity and specific mental function is important for medical diagnosis of brain symptoms, such as epilepsy. Magnetoencephalography (MEG), which uses an array of high-sensitivity magnetometers to record magnetic field signals generated from neural currents occurring naturally in the brain, is a noninvasive method for locating the brain activities. The MEG is normally performed in a magnetically shielded room. Here, we introduce an unshielded MEG system based on optically pumped atomic magnetometers. We build an atomic magnetic gradiometer, together with feedback methods, to reduce the environment magnetic field noise. We successfully observe the alpha rhythm signals related to closed eyes and clear auditory evoked field signals in unshielded Earth's field. Combined with improvements in the miniaturization of the atomic magnetometer, our method is promising to realize a practical wearable and movable unshielded MEG system and bring new insights into medical diagnosis of brain symptoms.