Toolbox for laminar inference with MEG, powered by FreeSurfer and SPM

Operating system

• Windows: Tested on WSL (using Ubuntu 24.04.1), follow instructions here
• Mac: May work, not tested
• Linux: Tested on Ubuntu and Debian

Requirements

• FreeSurfer v6.0
• Python version 3.7
• Anaconda (or miniconda)
• git
• curl

Upgrade Notice (v0.1.0)

If you used laMEG versions prior to v0.1.0, the internal format of laminar surface directories has changed. They are now stored within <SUBJECTS_DIR>/<subject_id>/surf/laminar, and <SUBJECTS_DIR>/<subject_id>/mri/orig.mgz is automatically used for co-registration. Older surfaces must be converted before they can be loaded with the new LayerSurfaceSet interface.

Run the conversion script:

python convert_legacy_surfaces.py <subject_id> <path_to_old_lameg_surf_dir>

For example:

python convert_legacy_surfaces.py sub-104 /data/old_surfaces/sub-104

This will rebuild the standardized hierarchy under:

<SUBJECTS_DIR>/<subject_id>/surf/laminar

and generate complete metadata for each processing stage.

After conversion, you can validate the new structure:

from lameg.surf import LayerSurfaceSet
surf_set = LayerSurfaceSet('sub-104', 11)
surf_set.validate()

Installation

1. Install git and curl if needed:

   sudo apt-get install git curl
   

2. Create a conda environment:

   conda create -n <env name> python=3.7
   

   replacing <env name> with the name of the environment you would like to create (i.e. 'lameg', or the name of your project)

3. Activate the environment:

   conda activate <env name>
   

   replacing <env name> with name of the environment you created.

4. Install FreeSurfer, following the instructions on this page

5. To install laMEG, run:

   pip install lameg
   

   Then run the post-installation script:

   lameg-postinstall
   

   This installs SPM standalone and Matlab runtime, which can take some time depending on your connection speed.

6. Before using, deactivate and reactivate the environment for changes to environment variables to take effect:

   conda deactivate
   conda activate <env name>
   

7. If you want to run the tutorials, download and extract the test data

Documentation and Tutorials

Once you have installed laMEG, check out the example notebooks, tutorials, and documentation. For guidelines on MRI sequences, head-cast construction, and co-registration, see the wiki

Funding

Supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant agreement 864550, and a seed grant from the Fondation pour l'Audition.