University of Victoria researcher Philip Zeman is data mining. He looks for patterns in a vast source of information -- much like companies like Google and Facebook do with the Internet.

But instead of the World Wide Web, Zeman is in the business of analyzing brain activity.

Part of a multi-disciplined three person team, Dr. Zeman, neuropsychologist Dr. Ron Skelton and neuropsychology PhD student Sharon Lee have developed a new and less expensive procedure for analyzing EEG (electroencephalographic) data.

The EEG apparatus isn't new, but how they're using it is.

To use the EEG, a subject wears a special cap that amplifies the brain's neuron activity through electrodes on the scalp and that neural activity is recorded. EEG's have been commonly used to diagnose epilepsy.

The Multiple Origin Spatio-Temporal-EEG (MOST-EEG) application, as the UVic team has called it, is a series of mathematical algorithms created by Zeman, implemented in software. They take the EEG signal measured from the scalp and map it into something meaningful, he said.

"We create an image of the brain's functioning while something is happening: viewing a website, playing a video game, and what areas of the brain are interacting."

MOST-EEG is the fruit of Zeman's work over the past seven years. A UVic engineering undergrad, Zeman's multi-disciplined PhD combines biology, psychology and engineering.

The MOST-EEG's psychological revelations would not only provide a new service in the medical science arena but they could spill over into commercial applications too. Zeman said one of MOST-EEG's biggest practical applications is to measure neural recovery from brain injuries.

"(We can look at) how the brain has compensated for an injury in one area or how a silenced area of the brain (due to injury) becomes active after a time period," said Zeman.

Currently running their third research project, the UVic MOST-EEG team are in the stage of "technologically proving what we can do," said Zeman, monitoring people from the local community, some with brain injuries. "We evaluate how well the technology can evaluate the characteristics of brain injuries."

Other factors, such as the MOST-EEG's minimal costs and ability to monitor the effects of advertising and pharmaceuticals on the brain means a number of potential applications.

Once a pharmaceutical is approved for testing at the human stage, that company can use the MOST-EEG to study the pharmaceutical's subtle cognitive effects on people: the ability to think and solve problems, having a lowered ability to focus, whether they might be depressed, and more, said Zeman.

Compared to functional magnetic resonating image (fMRI), the most common way to retrieve precise localization of brain activity, the MOST-EEG is significantly cheaper, and would therefore be much more reasonable option for monitoring brain injury rehab. The EEG's physical apparatus costs between $40,000 to $60,000, and, though delicate, it is portable enough that it can be stored in a box, whereas an MRI costs over a million dollars and is permanently housed in a dedicated room.

Furthermore the annual operating cost of an fMRI is in the hundred of thousands, but the annual cost of running MOST-EEG for results would be the single salary of a trained practitioner.

Funding to this point has been provided in part by UVic, CanAssist and NSERC (Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

For more information visit www.brainandvision.com.