FriSem

Qiyuan Feng, PhD Student advised by Justin Gardner, Department of Psychology, Stanford University

Title: A Framework for Evaluating the Spatial Resolution of MEG-OPM Using Visual Cortex

Abstract: A central goal in cognitive neuroscience is to understand where in the brain specific computations occur and when they unfold. Yet no single noninvasive neuroimaging method currently provides both high spatial and high temporal precision. With next-generation MEG-OPM systems—soon to be available at Stanford—there is growing excitement about the possibility of achieving both. While MEG-OPM provides high temporal resolution, what spatial resolution can we expect? To address this, we take advantage of the retinotopic organization of the visual cortex as a benchmark for evaluating the spatial fidelity of MEG-OPM. In particular, we compare source localization results from a frequency-tagged visual paradigm directly to fMRI-based retinotopic predictions. We first validate this framework using empirical EEG measurements, finding peak localization errors on the order of ~2 cm. Simulations using the same pipeline predict that MEG-OPM could reduce these errors by approximately 50%. These findings suggest that MEG-OPM may offer higher spatial precision than current noninvasive electrophysiological methods, supporting more accurate studies of fast, distributed cortical computations.