Breakthrough: Scientists harness the power of electricity in the brain

Breakthrough: Scientists harness the power of electricity in the brain: Researchers identified the brain activity they wanted to measure by attaching dozens of sensors to a subject who was either walking or running on a treadmill. They then used an MRI-based model of the head to figure out where in the brain that electrical activity originated. In this way, scientists could localize the sources of the brain activity they were interested in and ignore the rest of the activity if it did not originate in the brain.

Ferris, who also has an appointment in biomedical engineering, said there are a couple reasons scientists can do this type of measuring now when it wasn't possible even a few years ago. Colleagues at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience devised the computational tools to do the measuring noninvasively in seated individuals, and without those tools the measuring would have been impossible. The two research groups then pushed farther and tried the measuring in walking and running subjects.

Also, electrodes have gotten more sensitive and have a better signal to noise ratio, he said.