Oakland University - Henry Ford Hospital Team Studies the Brain Using Magnetoencephalography

Emeritus Professor Norman Tepley, a former chairman of the Department of Physics, leads a laboratory at Henry Ford Hospital that studies magnetoencephalography: the magnetic field produced by the brain. In a recent paper published in the journal Brain Research (Volume 1251, Pages 151-161, 2009), Tepley and Adjunct Assistant Professor Susan Bowyer (a 1998 graduate of OU's Biomedical Sciences: Medical Physics PhD program) examine the neural mechanisms that modulate reaction times to visual events while viewing a driving video, with and without a conversation. They find that conversation may contribute to increased reaction times.