MAGNETOENCEPHALOGRAPHIC STUDIES OF NEUROLOGIC & PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The process of sensory perception and consciousness is a highly evolved mental state that can be described as an organism's awareness of representations of its internal or external environment. The neural mechanisms underlying normal conscious processes, and the degrees of their disruption in neurologic and psychiatric diseases are far from understood. This protocol aims to identify and elaborate the neurophysiology of thalamocortical processes. This range extends from the normal processing of sensory and cognitive events, through partial aberrations in thalamocortical dysfunction which can lead to neurological or psychiatric symptoms, to a disconnection in the vegetative state. Patients will be recruited along the continuum of neurologic and psychiatric illness. An attempt will be made to characterize with MEG the differences in brain activity between subjects suffering from chronic, severe, and therapy-resistant neurologic and psychiatric disorders, compared to activity in normal controls. An attempt will be made to localize characterized activity to regions within the brain in order to uncover the thalamocortical circuits involved in the generation of abnormal neurophysiology. An objective magnetoencephalographic assay to identify and monitor the source of symptoms is hoped to be developed.