Fifty Years of Magnetoencephalography Beginnings, Technical Advances, and Applications

Fifty Years of Magnetoencephalography celebrates the first half century of research in and clinical applications of magnetoencephalography (MEG). It catalogs and documents its evolution as a means of imaging the ongoing activity of the brain and the activation of particular neuronal networks within it that mediate sensory motor and higher functions like language. The volume's first section looks at the discovery of MEG and its first tentative applications by three of its founders. The following sections detail the rapid progress in the development of the instrumentation necessary for recording noninvasively the magnetic signals on the head that are associated with the brain activity; improvements in the techniques for analyzing the magnetic signals and reconstructing, on their basis, the functional images of brain activity; and improvements in our understanding of the nature and significance of those signals. Subsequent sections of the book detail the main clinical applications of MEG in localizing brain areas that contain sources of epileptiform activity and areas encompassing parts of functional networks essential for motor and sensory function as well as for language that have become an essential part of planning for brain surgery in many epilepsy and tumor surgery centers around the world. In addition, several chapters describe the most current efforts aiming at expanding the utility of MEG in clinical diagnosis and theoretical research.

Andrew C. Papanicolaou is Professor of Clinical Neuroscience Emeritus of the University of Tennessee, College of Medicine, where he served as founder and Chief of the Division of Clinical Neuroscience; visiting Professor of Neurology at the National University of Athens, Greece; President of the advisory board of the Center of Applied Neuroscience of the University of Cyprus and honorary member of the Hellenic Clinical Neurophysiology and Neuropsychology Societies.

Timothy P.L. Roberts is a Professor of Radiology at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania. He received his BA from Cambridge University in 1988 and his PhD, also from Cambridge University, in 1992. He has developed a career in multimodal neuroimaging, especially using MEG, MRI, and MRS and been on the faculty at UCSF and the University of Toronto before his arrival at CHOP/University of Pennsylvania in 2005.

James W. Wheless is a Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics, and the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology with special qualifications in Child Neurology, Clinical Neurophysiology, and Epilepsy. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Neurology, and the American Epilepsy Society. Dr. Wheless is a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Child Neurology, Formulary, and Epilepsy.com and serves as reviewer of a number of journals including: Neurology, Epilepsia, Pediatrics, and Epilepsy and Behavior.