Wearable MEG data recorded during human stepping
Meaghan Elizabeth Spedden, George C. O’Neill, Timothy O. West, Tim M. Tierney, Stephanie Mellor, Nicholas Alexander, Robert A. Seymour, Jesper Lundbye‐Jensen, Jens Bo Nielsen, Simon Francis Farmer, Sven Bestmann, Gareth Robert Barnes · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025
Abstract Non-invasive spatiotemporal imaging of brain activity during large-scale, whole body movement is a significant methodological challenge for the field of movement neuroscience. Here, we present a dataset recorded using a new imaging modality – optically-pumped magnetoencephalography (OP-MEG) – to record brain activity during human stepping. Participants ( n =3) performed a visually guided stepping task requiring precise foot placement while dual-axis and triaxial OP-MEG and leg muscle activity (electromyography, EMG) were recorded. The dataset also includes a structural MRI for each participant and foot kinematics. We validate the fidelity of the OPM data by showing movement-related beta band desynchronization source localised to the primary motor cortex. This multimodal dataset offers a resource for methodological development and testing for OPM data (e.g., movement-related interference rejection), within-subject analyses, and exploratory analyses to generate hypotheses for further work on the neural control of human stepping.