KIT-Macquarie Brain Research Laboratory
Latest lab news:
In July 2008, the world's first whole-head child MEG system was installed at the KIT-Macquarie Brain Research Laboratory. This laboratory is part of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS). The new child MEG system adds to an adult MEG system that was launched in 2006. The adult MEG system is the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. With the new child system, the KIT-Macquarie Brain Research Laboratory is the first lab in the world to house two MEG systems in the same location. More information.The lab
In July 2008, the world's first child MEG system was installed at the KIT-Macquarie Brain Research Laboratory, part of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, at Macquarie University. It is a whole-head system specifically sized and shaped for children, 
that the system's 64 sensors are positioned close enough to the child's head to accurately measure brain activity with no discomfort to the child. MEG (magnetoencephalography) is a brain imaging technique that measures the magnetic fields generated by the human brain 
whenever information is being processed. It is non-contact, and non-invasive, so it can be used with children. In 2006, the Brain Research Lab unveiled the Southern Hemisphere's first MEG system, so the Brain Research Lab is also first in the world to have two MEG systems in the same local environment.
The child MEG system is funded, in part, by an Australian Research Council Linkage Industrial Partner Grant (#LP0669471). This grant was awarded to researchers at MACCS (Professors Stephen Crain and Max Coltheart and Dr. Rosalind Thornton) and to Professor Hisashi Kado, Director of the Applied Electronics Laboratory of the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, with generous financial support from the Yokogawa Electric Co., Japan. Additional funding for MEG studies using the child system has been awarded as part of the HEARing CRC, and the National Acoustic Labs is working with us to refine the MEG systems for precise presentation and analysis of speech sounds.
The availability of these two MEG systems was instrumental in recruiting several cognitive neuroscientists to the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, and we are actively recruiting researchers to the Macquarie University Centre for Language Sciences. The aim of the project is to study cognitive processing in children using MEG. Among our first studies will be investigations of the time course and locations of the brain mechanisms involved when children process linguistic information in different linguistic tasks (e.g. reading, listening to words or sentences). The data from these initial studies will establish baseline measures for future studies with special clinical populations including children with dyslexia or with specific language impairment.
With Macquarie's partner hearing organizations, we are planning a third MEG system to assist in the rehabilitation of young children who receive cochlear implants. Recipients of a cochlear implant receive extensive rehabilitation to recognize the sounds of speech. Hearing is assessed by asking the cochlear implant recipient to report their subjective impressions of sounds. This is a difficult and frustrating process for adults, and children younger than 3 or 4 cannot perform this feat at all. 
Yet cochlear implants are being fitted to babies as young as 3 months old. To overcome these difficulties, we are developing the world's first measurement system using MEG to provide objective measures of how recipients of a cochlear implant, including very young children, hear the sounds of speech.
The arrival of this new technology promises to be valuable (a) for the identification of cortical functions in the normal developing brain, (b) for the diagnosis of developmental and acquired brain disorders, and (c) in the post-surgical recovery of children who receive cochlear implants, to name just a few potential uses of the MEG systems at the Brain Research Laboratory. 
The MEG laboratory is called the KIT-Macquarie Brain Research Lab, in recognition of the collaboration between Macquarie University and the Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT), Japan. KIT has invited the Yokogawa Electric Corporation to assist us in designing a state-of-the-art presentation and analysis system for MEG-related studies using auditory and visual stimulus materials, and integrating data analysis from MEG with those from EEG, fMRI and eye-movement recording.
MEG Executive Committee
Contact staff
Christopher Sewell (Research Assistant)
Dr Graciela Tesan (MEG Lab Manager)