Gov. Chris Gregoire cut a purple ribbon held by a team of excited pre-schoolers Monday morning, and officially opened a $7 million facility that researchers believe could revolutionize how we understand the development of a child's brain.
The Magnetoencephalography (or MEG) machine monitors minute changes in the magnetic field in the brain. The study subject reclines in a chair (or in the case of an infant, a car seat), and the machine fits over the head, like an old beauty-salon hair dryer would, if the hair dryer were the size of a fridge.
The MEG facility at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington is the first in the world to be designed for use with young children.
Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the institute, said the improvement in technology was like "going from still photographs to video in living color."
Four million dollars came from the state's Life Sciences Discovery Fund, which dispenses money from a court settlement with tobacco companies.
Gregoire said that the state is already drawing on the institute's work on early learning as it works on building early childhood education programs and that the information the new facility can provide should help better kids' lives.
"Children are literally born learning, and every day we fail them is a lost opportunity for that child," she said.
The MEG makes it possible to observe, in detail, how the brain responds to different kinds of stimuli. Unlike MRI machines, which have study subjects staying still in a noisy, clanking tube, MEGs work while their study subjects are seated in a quiet room.
In a video of an experiment in Finland, a round-faced baby sits in a car seat, under the MEG, gazing at a research assistant playing with a Slinky and a plastic pompom.
"We have the best toy-wavers," said Erica Stevens, assistant director of the institute.
Meanwhile, the baby listens to language sounds, from its native tongue and others, and 306 sensors in the machine record the electromagnetic responses in the child's brain.
The scans look like black and white brain sections, with activity highlighted as sparks of color. The MEG can localize activity to the millimeter and time it to the millisecond.
And this gives scientist a tool that can answer some fundamental questions. In an interview before the ribbon-cutting, Andrew Meltzoff, the other co-director of the institute, said a good example is in this action: hearing a phrase and repeating it back.
Scientists know that task involves several parts of the brain -- associated with hearing, language and motor control -- but they don't know how those parts cooperate, said Meltzoff.
"People haven't been able to look at how the pieces get connected."
The MEG might also help scientists to understand more about problems such as autism and epilepsy, and possibly find what Kuhl calls "biomarkers," signs that can be detected with standard medical equipment, and found and treated early, before brain patterns are set.
It might also give some insight into the causes and the impact of stereotypes, such as the idea that girls aren't good at math.
(In a new study of 240 Seattle elementary school students, researchers at the institute found that the conviction that boys were better at math showed up as early as second grade).
The MEG will be the centerpiece of what backers are calling the "Developing Mind Project." The institute is getting three new faculty members this year to help carry out the research.
William H. Gates Sr. , co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of several private backers of the project, spoke by webcast from London.
"It would produce ground-breaking data, new data for the improvement of all ages," he said.
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