Deep brain activities can be detected with magnetoencephalography

F Pizzo (1, 2) , N Roehri (1) , S Medina Villalon (1, 2) , A. Trébuchon (2, 1) , S. Chen (1) , Stanislas Lagarde (1, 3) , R Carron (1, 2) , M Gavaret (4) , B Giusiano (1) , A Mcgonigal (1) , Fabrice Bartolomei (1) , J M Badier (1) , C G Bénar (1)

1 INS - Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes
2 TIMONE - Hôpital de la Timone [CHU - APHM]
3 Service de neurophysiologie clinique [Hôpital de la Timone - APHM]
4 IPNP - U1266 Inserm - Paris Descartes - Institut de psychiatrie et neurosciences de Paris

The hippocampus and amygdala are key brain structures of the medial temporal lobe, involved in cognitive and emotional processes as well as pathological states such as epilepsy. Despite their importance, it is still unclear whether their neural activity can be recorded non-invasively. Here, using simultaneous intracerebral and magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings in patients with focal drug-resistant epilepsy, we demonstrate a direct contribution of amygdala and hippocampal activity to surface MEG recordings. In particular, a method of blind source separation, independent component analysis, enabled activity arising from large neocortical networks to be disentangled from that of deeper structures, whose amplitude at the surface was small but significant. This finding is highly relevant for our understanding of hippocampal and amygdala brain activity as it implies that their activity could potentially be measured non-invasively.

Domaines: Neurosciences

F Pizzo, N Roehri, S Medina Villalon, A. Trébuchon, S. Chen, et al.. Deep brain activities can be detected with magnetoencephalography. Nature Communications, 2019, 10, pp.971. ⟨10.1038/s41467-019-08665-5⟩. ⟨hal-02513949⟩