Fetal magnetoencephalography based on optically pumped magnetometers

The fetus in the third trimester of gestation has already the remarkable capacity to process external sensory information in utero. So far, investigations of fetal brain responses to sensory information have mostly relied on cryogenic magnetoencephalography (MEG), which is suitable to record fetal brain activity and is not much affected by layers of maternal tissues. Nevertheless, this solution is extremely expensive and limited to a couple of laboratories worldwide. In this work, we took advantage of the next generation cryogenic-free MEG, that is MEG based on optically pumped magnetometers (OPM), to develop a system that could record both fetal and newborn brain responses to auditory stimulation in a longitudinal design. Twenty-one pregnant women in their late third trimester of gestation (35-40 weeks of gestational age) were exposed to sequences of 500 Hz tones. Fetal brain activity was recorded using a wearable belt equipped with OPM sensors arranged on the women’s abdomen based on fetal head position. Results revealed that fetal OPM-MEG successfully recorded significant evoked brain responses to auditory stimuli that peaked ~300 ms post-stimulus at the group level. A similar auditory paradigm was performed with on-scalp OPM-MEG in 14 one-month-old infants, with 9 participants common to both timepoints. Infant responses showed a significant latency decrease compared to the fetal ones in terms of magnetometers; a decrease that did not reach significance level for virtual gradiometers. This work demonstrates the ability of OPM-MEG to non-invasively record fetal brain responses to external sensory stimuli. It paves the way for a wider use of fetal MEG to investigate fetal cognition and positions OPM-MEG as the most promising lifespan-compliant solution for monitoring early brain development.