Co-operative study by magnetoencephalography

Since 1991 when the new MEG multi-channel MEG (magnetoencephalography) machine was installed at NIPS, NIPS have done good works using MEG and reported many excellent papers as the pioneer of MEG studies in Japan. In addition, many researchers in universities or institutes where MEG machine was not installed yet visited NIPS and did good cooperative studies. NIPS was and is still now only one institute which provides an opportunity to use MEG machine to researchers outside as cooperative studies using large facilities. NIPS installed new whole-head type MEG machine in 2002. This is used just for research objective, though MEG machines in other universities are used for both clinical and research works, mainly the former. At present, basic MEG studies at NIPS is evaluated as one of the best not only in Japan but also in the world. Cooperative studies using MEG are classified into two themes: (1) Investigation of higher brain functions such as judgment, memory and learning, and (2) Investigation of sensory and motor functions. One of the most important issues for MEG study at NIPS is corroborative studies using other neuroimaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and near infra-red spectroscopy (NIRS).