Hit that ball Wellcome

For the first time, babies and young children will be able to have their brain activity measured, thanks to a portable – and personalised – scanner that can image brains while a person is on the move. The scanner could also image the brain’s of people with movement disorders and others who are not able to lay still enough in a traditional scanner.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) analyses the electrical activity going on in the brain, via the magnetic fields that this activity generates just outside the skull. However, until now MEG has involved sitting very still inside a scanner, limiting its use and making it unsuitable for use on young children.

Now, Richard Bowtell from the University of Nottingham, and his colleagues have designed a portable MEG device that is worn like a helmet, allowing people to move freely during scanning. They tested the device on four people while they moved their fingers, and got results similar to those achieved using a traditional MEG scanner.


They then used their device to scan the volunteers while drinking tea or playing a ball game – neither of which are possible in a normal MEG scanner.

Tiny sensor

Bowtell and his colleagues were able to make the scanner portable by replacing traditional sensors, which have a heavy, bulky cooling system, with miniature sensors that detect the brain’s magnetic field in a different way.

These sensors can be attached directly to the scalp using a 3D-printed helmet that can be personalised to fit any sized head. The whole system weighs less than 1 kilogram.

The wearer can’t wander around the world completely freely – the scanner still has to be worn inside a specially designed room that helps to counteract the influence of the Earth’s natural magnetic field. But there are lots of applications, says Bowtell. “It could be used to analyse brain activity while people navigate, for instance. You can also have more natural interactions between people – two people each wearing a scanner and speaking face to face.”

It also makes it possible to scan toddlers and babies to study their neurodevelopment, he adds.

Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature26147