West Haven VAMC MEG Lab Installation

For the Magnetoencephalography (MEG) Lab Installation at the West Haven VA Medical Center in Connecticut, Paradigm is currently providing complete design services, including architectural, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC.

This VA Medical Center is one of two VA hospitals in New England that provide neurosurgical services and is located three miles from the Yale Medical School campus. This Medical Center is also one of 16 sites for an Epilepsy Center of Excellence, providing epilepsy evaluation and care for veterans.

So it makes sense that the West Haven VA Medical Center will soon be the home of a MEG lab. MEG is a non-invasive way to assess brain activity by measuring neuromagnetic signals generated by the flow of brain neurons. MEG provides more comfort for patients than an MRI, since a person can move their head within the MEG helmet. A patient can even sleep while wearing this device.

A series of three recent VA-funded studies demonstrates the advantages to using a MEG. The researchers focused on the question of whether a human leukocyte antigen (HLA) gene offered protection from Gulf War illness (GWI).

An estimated 300,000 veterans have GWI, a difficult-to-diagnose illness that notably affects the brain. Symptoms include memory loss, depression, anxiety, and chronic headaches.

In the second of these studies, a MEG scan found differences in synchronous neural interactions with 94% accuracy between a group who had GWI and a group that did not. This difference could be a way to predict GWI, and the findings from these three studies could potentially lead to immunotherapy for veterans with this illness.

That’s just one way that a MEG device has beneficially contributed to research on how to help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With a MEG Lab installed at the West Haven VA Medical Center, doctors and researchers will soon be able to use this device to help many more through PTSD-oriented research.