New Tech in Neuroscience: Hannah Gallagher ’24’s Brain Scan Research 

You may not realize it, but there’s a neurological reason behind how we do some simple tasks, like deciding how to arrange furniture in a room. Some people can easily visualize a new piece of furniture in a space, while others need measuring tape and multiple tries to find the best configuration. The scientific name for this skill is mental rotation, and it’s an essential part of how a healthy brain functions. Hannah Gallagher ’24 (psychology) had the opportunity to work with data on mental rotation during her internship at the Boys Town National Research Hospital (BTNRH) in Nebraska last summer. The lab where she worked conducts research using the latest tech in neuroscience to discover how the brain functions differently in healthy and unhealthy people.  

Boys Town: A Leader for Tech in Neuroscience 

BTNRH is a well-respected, nonprofit research hospital that receives millions of dollars to sponsor their meaningful work in translational research, which involves studying issues their current patients struggle with to discover better treatments. With a focus on hearing, communication and neurobehavioral research, BTNRH has developed many groundbreaking discoveries over the years, including cochlear implants, the Usher Syndrome Type IIa gene and newborn hearing screenings. 

Gallagher interned with BTNRH’s Institute for Human Neuroscience, which focuses on brain research through projects on Alzheimer’s disease, hearing loss, mental health and cerebral palsy. Funding for these projects comes from the federal National Institutes of Health and community donations, with the highest-funded project bringing in over $12 million.  

Exploring the Brain 

Gallagher worked in a lab with Dr. Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Human Neuroscience. This lab examined brain scans that had previously been conducted on research participants using a new invention called magnetoencephalography (MEG). Past brain research primarily used other brain-imaging tools, like EEG (electroencephalogram) or fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). While these tools are helpful, can’t provide researchers as much information about the brain as MEG. “MEG is special in that it has both really good spatial and temporal resolution, so we can tell exactly where in the brain the activity is happening and exactly when it’s happening,” says Gallagher.  

Because MEG is a relatively new tech in neuroscience, there is little data on mental rotation tasks using this tool. “Because my project was a pilot, meaning it’s one of the first times this task has been done with MEG, we were wondering what the activity looks like in a healthy sample before we compare it to a clinical sample,” Gallagher said. In this case, the “clinical sample” is people with sicknesses like radon poisoning or HIV.  

The way people use their brains to figure out how objects fit into space can show how a sickness has affected the way they think. Gallagher’s team used MEG to observe changes in neural oscillations, namely alpha and theta frequencies, as participants completed mental rotation tasks. They noticed robust changes in the oscillations’ range, showing that there were condition-related differences in areas of the brain involved with visual or motor processing and object comparison. 

Although there’s still much to explore in the field of neuroscience, this project was a huge step forward. By learning how the brain is affected by illness, medical professionals can improve how they treat people with sicknesses and improve their brain health. 

Giving Glory to God in Our Work 

Since ending her internship and graduating from Gordon Gallagher has started work as a research assistant for Dr. Oliver J. Lindheim, associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UMPC)—a research hospital focused on parent and child psychopathology. Gallagher hopes to gain more experience in neuroscience before applying to graduate school in pursuit of a doctorate in psychology. While tools like MEG have helped scientists to discover much about the brain, there is still much uncharted territory to discover, and Gallagher is excited to continue in this meaningful field of work that can impact thousands of people for the better.  

Gallagher’s biggest takeaway from her internship is the complexity of the human body. Studying the brain has given her an appreciation of the world God made. “Humans struggle to even measure how a basic cognitive process is happening, which is a testament to how beautiful God’s creation is,” she says.  

Reagan Forbes ’24, communication arts