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Friday April 10, 1998 Health Notes By LIDIA WASOWICZ UPI Science Writer BRAIN-IMAGING SYSTEM UNVEILED: The U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a new medical instrument doctors say will help them assess patients with brain injuries and diseases and even help solve the mysteries of how the brain works. The whole-head magnetoencephalography sensor system incorporates new concepts that should reduce the cost of such instruments from about $3 million to less than $500,000 and allow many more patients to benefit, the researchers said. Magnetoencephalography, or MEG, is a method of measuring the tiny magnetic fields produced when groups of the brain's 100 billion or so cells, or neurons, are active. Those fields, a billion times smaller than Earth's magnetic field and 10,000 times smaller than the field surrounding a household wire, are generated by electrical currents that result from thought, the sound of music, the impulse to move a muscle and other types of brain activity. MEG scans can help neurosurgeons pinpoint areas associated with brain injury or functional abnormalities such as epilepsy and help researchers study such disorders as Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia.