Potential of Functional MREIT to Detect Neural Activity Related Conductivity Changes: Numerical Simulation Studies

Hyung Joong Kim¹, Zijun Meng¹, Saurav ZK Sajib¹, Woo Chul Jeong¹, Young Tae Kim¹, Rosalind J. Sadleir², Eung Je Woo¹

Imaging of cell membrane conductivity change may provide a truly direct method of locating neural activity compared to fMRI. The advantage of MREIT as a basis for direct neural activity imaging is that the imaged quantity, membrane conductivity, is a scalar and therefore is not subject to cancellation errors such as those inherent in neural current imaging techniques. In this work, we use a realistic head model to compute signal levels produced as a consequence of a predicted 5% conductivity change occurring within gray matter. We reconstructed conductivity images, showing that these small conductivity differences can be detected and imaged.