Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Curr Opin Psychiatry. 2010 May;23(3):273-7. doi: 10.1097/YCO.0b013e328338621d.
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) has been available for over 30 years, but the past 10 years have seen serious investigation of its use as a clinical tool. It is therefore an opportune time to review how MEG is able to contribute to neuropsychiatric research and practice.
We limit this review to the areas of dementia, schizophrenia, depression and autism. MEG can achieve correct classification of individuals with mild cognitive impairment versus Alzheimer's disease, may identify a marker of early disease in schizophrenia, can distinguish bipolar from major depressive disorder, and has been used to study cognitive and other deficits in autism. It provides a valuable tool to study cognitive dysfunction.
The most important aspect of MEG is the ability to record neural activity with millisecond precision, allowing coherence analysis of neural data to examine how brain areas are synchronized. Such synchrony is thought to underlie cognitive processes. As cognitive dysfunction is a common marker of neuropsychiatric disorders, MEG is emerging as an important investigatory tool in neuropsychiatry. It may also be useful clinically for early or differential diagnosis of some neuropsychiatric disorders, or for the prediction of drug effects, but more research is necessary before this becomes a clinical reality.
脑磁图（MEG）问世已有 30 多年，但在过去的 10 年中，人们对其作为临床工具的应用进行了深入研究。因此，现在正是回顾 MEG 如何有助于神经精神研究和实践的好时机。
我们将本综述的范围限制在痴呆、精神分裂症、抑郁症和自闭症领域。MEG 可以正确区分轻度认知障碍与阿尔茨海默病患者，可能可以识别精神分裂症早期疾病的标志物，可以区分双相情感障碍与重度抑郁症，并且已经用于研究自闭症患者的认知和其他缺陷。它为研究认知功能障碍提供了有价值的工具。
MEG 的最重要方面是能够以毫秒级的精度记录神经活动，从而可以对神经数据进行相干性分析，以检查大脑区域如何同步。这种同步被认为是认知过程的基础。由于认知功能障碍是神经精神疾病的常见标志物，因此 MEG 正在成为神经精神医学中的重要研究工具。它也可能对某些神经精神疾病的早期或鉴别诊断或药物作用的预测具有临床应用价值，但在这成为临床现实之前，还需要进行更多的研究。
