Abstract

A lot of interesting behaviour of the hippocampus occurs on a sub-second scale. Measuring this activity with magnetoencephalography (MEG) remains challenging due to the hippocampus’ depth as well as the spatial uncertainty introduced during data acquisition and co-registration. In this talk, I will describe how the depth can be accounted for by anatomical modelling, and the spatial uncertainty minimized by using head-casts. I will discuss recent results from an experiment combining these two methods with a spatial memory task known to give rise to hippocampal theta oscillations. I will demonstrate that this enables temporally resolved, non-invasive, in vivo recordings of human hippocampal activity using MEG . In addition, I will discuss how these measurements accord with predictions from invasive rodent and human measurements. Finally, I will show data recorded with new non-cryogenic MEG sensors which can be placed directly on the scalp, and discuss the potential for these sensors to replace conventional cryogenic MEG .