The Marseille MEG platform.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) consists in recording brain magnetic activity. This activity is the counterparts of the electrical activity that originate from the brain, the well-known EEG. These techniques are the only ones that are directly related to the neural activity and have enough time resolution to track brain activity. One of the great advantages of the MEG other EEG is the very small effect of the conductivity of the different media of the head, especially the skull, compared to EEG.

The MEG laboratory of Marseille uses a 248 magnetometers MEG system (4D Neuroimaging magnes 3600). It is part of the Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes (INS, Head V. Jirsa), and is installed within the Neurophysiology department of the Timone hospital (Head: F. Bartolomei). The system was co-financed by: Conseil Régional PACA, Conseil Général 13, Conseil Général 06, Marseille Provence Métropole, INSERM, CNRS, INRIA. It is currently co-financed by Aix-Marseille Université (though France Life Imaging) and INSERM.

The laboratory is equipped with stimulation apparatus that includes video projection and Stax calibrated system for auditory stimulation. It belongs to the Aix-Marseille University and is accessible to all teams involved in fundamental and clinical brain research, and has the label "plateforme technologique". The platform is invovled in a day hospital with AP-HM for presurgical evaluation of patients with epilepsy

The research team of the MEG laboratory is specialized in confronting results of source localization to intracerebral EEG and in designing and optimizing signal processing methods for multimodal functional investigation of human cerebral activity (pathological and physiological). See Dynamap page.

For a list of publications from the teams associated with the MEG platform, see Publications.

News and Events

The team will be present at the ECCN 2023 in Marseille and the HBM conference in Montreal.

Recent Publications

López-Madrona VJ, Medina Villalon S, Badier JM, Trébuchon A, Jayabal V, Bartolomei F, Carron R, Barborica A, Vulliémoz S, Alario FX, Bénar CG. Magnetoencephalography can reveal deep brain network activities linked to memory processes. Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 Oct 15;43(15):4733-4749. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25987. Epub 2022 Jun 29. PMID: 35766240

Velmurugan J, Badier JM, Pizzo F, Medina Villalon S, Papageorgakis C, López-Madrona V, Jegou A, Carron R, Bartolomei F, Bénar CG. Virtual MEG sensors based on beamformer and independent component analysis can reconstruct epileptic activity as measured on simultaneous intracerebral recordings. Neuroimage. 2022 Dec 1;264:119681. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119681. Epub 2022 Oct 18. PMID: 36270623

Pizzo F et al Deep brain activities can be detected with magnetoencephalography. Nat Commun. 2019 commented in Addressing a Deep Problem With Magnetoencephalography. Englot DJ. Epilepsy Curr. 2019

see full list of Publications.