magnetoencephalography

Post-traumatic stress, which is estimated to afflict one in five veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone, is typically diagnosed through behavioral screenings and is often considered a "soft" disorder with no known biomarkers.

"It's like depression in that it can be hidden by the sufferer, it can be latent, and it can be re-activated," says Apostolos Georgopoulos, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota. "That's a major issue for the Army, which has to decide whether to re-deploy troops who have had it."

Georgopoulos has previously discovered biomarkers … Read more

Because children with autism spectrum disorders tend to process sound and language a fraction of a second slower than children without the disorders, researchers have discovered that measuring magnetic signals that mark this kind of delayed response has the potential to become a standardized tool for diagnosing autism.

"More work needs to be done before this can become a standard tool, but this pattern of delayed brain response may be refined into the first imaging biomarker for autism," said Dr. Timothy P.L. Roberts, vice chairman of Radiology Research at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and head … Read more