Facilitating cognitive neuroscience research with 80-sensor optically pumped magnetometer magnetoencephalography (OPM-MEG)

Recent advancements in optically pumped magnetometer magnetoencephalography (OPM-MEG) make it a promising alternative to conventional SQUID-MEG systems. Nonetheless, as reported in the literature, current OPM-MEG systems are often constrained by a limited number of sampling points, which restricts their capability to match the full-head coverage offered by SQUID-MEG systems. Additionally, whether OPM-MEG can deliver results comparable to SQUID-MEG in practical cognitive neuroscience applications remains largely unexplored. In this study, we introduce a high-density, full-head coverage OPM-MEG system with 80 sensors and systematically compare the performance of OPM-MEG and SQUID-MEG, from sensor- to source-level analysis, across various classic cognitive tasks. Our results demonstrate that visual and auditory evoked fields captured using OPM-MEG align closely with those obtained from SQUID-MEG. Furthermore, steady-state visual evoked field and finger-tapping-induced beta power change recorded with OPM-MEG are accurately localized to corresponding brain regions, with activation centers highly congruent to those observed with SQUID-MEG. For resting-state recordings, the two modalities exhibit similar power distributions, functional connectomes, and microstate clusters. These findings indicate that the 80-sensor OPM-MEG system provides spatial and temporal characteristics comparable to those of traditional SQUID-MEG. Thus, our study offers empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of high-density OPM-MEG and suggests that OPM-MEG, with dense sampling capability, represents a compelling alternative to conventional SQUID-MEG, facilitating further exploration of human cognition.