The purpose of this research study is to make models of the electrical properties of the brain and skull in babies and children.
The models we make will help doctors and research scientists get more accurate information from non-invasive imaging methods like electroencephalography (EEG) in healthy children and in children who may have disorders that affect the way their brain works. Right now, EEG is widely used clinically in very specific brain problems like epilepsy and sleep disorders. By making better models of the heads and brains of children, we hope to make this technique even more useful by showing it can help with a wider range of problems.
We need to find out whether our models can provide very accurate information on how the brain works, so in this study we will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as well as EEG. The fMRI uses a big magnet in which you lie down and look at pictures on a screen or tap your fingers while we take pictures of your brain at work. This tool will give us two ways of looking at how the brain works, and together they can prove that our head models have really improved the accuracy of EEG for looking at the brain at work in children. All participants who complete both the EEG and fMRI will be reimbursed $50 for their time.