Reliability and signal comparison of OPM-MEG, fMRI & iEEG in a repeated movie viewing paradigm.

Overview

1. Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, United States

Abstract

Optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs) offer a promising advancement in noninvasive neuroimaging via magnetoencephalography (MEG), but establishing their reliability and comparability to existing methods remains an ongoing endeavor. Here, we evaluated OPM recordings by assessing their test-retest reliability and comparing them to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) recordings. Data were collected from three independent participant groups during repeated viewings of a movie segment. In 7 canonical frequency bands (δ: 0.5–4 Hz, θ: 4–8 Hz, α: 8–12 Hz, β: 12–28 Hz, γ1: 28–46 Hz, γ2: 55–70 Hz, and HF: 64–116 Hz), as well as a broadband (BB: 0.5–116 Hz) signal, we quantified the signal consistency (1) within individuals, (2) across subjects, and (3) across modalities. OPM exhibited widespread reliability, particularly in lower frequency bands; spatial patterns resembled those of fMRI and iEEG in visual and auditory regions. Cross-modal analyses revealed robust correspondence between OPM and both fMRI and iEEG, including inverse correlations at low frequencies and positive correlations at higher frequencies in the OPM-fMRI comparison, consistent with known relationships between oscillatory power and BOLD responses. Comparisons of signal-to-noise (SNR) estimates further revealed that in some regions, the SNR of cross-modal alignment exceeded within-modality reliability, suggesting that bridging between modalities can sometimes enhance SNR by attenuating reliably shared noise. Our findings demonstrate that OPM consistently captures stimulus-driven neural dynamics that converge with established modalities.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

• zenodo:7525341 — at Zenodo; found in “Data and Code Availability”

Data and Code Availability

Data and analysis code underlying the conclusions of the manuscript are available at the Open Science Framework (OSF): https://osf.io/urjvb. The raw OPM data from Rier et al. (2023) are available on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7525341

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 1, 28 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, pages, dates, 2 authors, 7 keywords, 77 references.

Cite

This paper

Christiano, O. R., & Michelmann, S. (2026). Reliability and signal comparison of OPM-MEG, fMRI & iEEG in a repeated movie viewing paradigm. Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.), 4, IMAG.a.1218. https://doi.org/10.1162/imag.a.1218

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