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Facilities at CBRU

Laboratories at CBRU

We have 3 electroencephalography (EEG) laboratories with shielded rooms, trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) laboratory, and two mobile EEG recording units. EEG and autonomic nervous system (ANS) are recorded with two Biosemi ActiveTwo systems (BioSemi, Netherlands), BrainProducts BrainAmp DC, and two BrainProducts QuickAmp systems (Brain Products GmbH, Germany). Additionally, two Neuroscan Synamps 2 systems (Compumedics, USA) can be used for EEG recordings. Eye tracking combined with EEG is possible with EyeLink 1000 (SR Research Ltd., Canada) system.

 

EEG and ANS recording

 

Biosemi
ActiveTwo

Neuroscan
Synamps 2

BrainProducts
QuickAmp

Electrode/cap type

active / ABC

passive / QuickCap

active / ActiCap

Max EEG channel number

256

64

32

EMG (in addition to EEG)

max 8 bipolar

max 4 bipolar

max 4 bipolar

Plethysmography

yes

no

yes

GSR

yes

no

yes

Skin temperature

yes

no

yes

Respiration

yes

no

yes

Acceleration

yes

no

yes

In addition, bipolar electrode couplings (see above) can be used for measuring cardiac electrical activity. 

TMS/EEG

The NBS system 4 allows non-invasive brain stimulation with MRI-guided navigation in an accuracy of approx. 6 mm. For research into applications of repetitive TMS (rTMS), the NBS System 4 offers one of the most powerful stimulators available and stimulation frequency up to 50 Hz. The EEG system integrated is BrainAmp DC with 64 channels.

 

 Features:

  • Navigation: MRI-guided targeting of E-field
  • Integrated, powerful TMS with precision 8-shape coils
  • Options for navigated rTMS delivery
  • Cooled coils for long rTMS trains
  • Detailed specifications

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    Stimulus systems

    Stimulus system is identical in all four static laboratories. Powerful PC is running timing optimized Windows XP operating system. The mainly used stimulus software is Presentation (Neurobehavioral Systems), which works optimally with Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty soundcard. Videocard is NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT (256MB) with modified passive cooling system. Latencies between stimulus onsets and trigger pulses are monitored routinely. Jitters are 0,8±0,01 and 11±2,5 milliseconds in auditory and visual modality respectively.

    Sound pressures are measured by HD600 meters (Extech Instruments) which are calibrated and certificated. Headphones used in auditory experiments are Sony MDR-7506 professional studio monitoring headphones. Additionally, in one shielded room up to 8 independent loudspeakers are available and controlled by Presentation software. The laboratories have 40mm SQ acoustic panels by Ecophon. In the other two labs it is possible to have 2-3 loudspeakers.

    Other brain research facilities

    The personnel of CBRU has the possibility to use both the 306 channel whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG; Elekta Neuromag, Finland) and trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS; Nextstim, Finland) at the BioMag laboratory, Helsinki University Central Hospital and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; GE, UK) with 3T magnet at Advanced Magnetic Imaging Center, Aalto University.

    Analysis facilities

    In CBRU, there is quite an extensive selection of analysis software. Mostly researchers are using Matlab based tools, like EEGLAB with additional CBRU plug-ins, Anslab, and Fieldtrip. Commercial softwares available include Neuroscan Edit 4.4 ( Compumedics , USA ), Besa 5.3 (MEGIS Software GmbH, Germany ), Curry 6 ( Compumedics , USA ) and Neuromag tools ( Elekta Neuromag , Finland ).