Measuring brain activation non-invasively in freely moving healthy and neuropsychiatric human populations using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an optical brain monitoring technique which uses near-infrared spectroscopy for the purpose of functional neuroimaging. In particular, brain activity is measured by using near-infrared light to estimate cortical hemodynamic activity which occurs in response to neural activity. The signal is comparable with the BOLD signal measured by fMRI and is capable of measuring changes both in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin concentration. fNIRS devices are portable and one of the few non-invasive neuroimaging techniques which can be used in freely moving participants. Together with the minimal preparation time, this makes fNIRS the neuroimaging modality of choice for both clinical and healthy populations that have low frustration tolerance for longer preparation times (as required for e.g. EEG), or with keeping still (as required for e.g. fMRI), such as children or persons with dementia.

Keywords:emotion, social cognition, dementia, infants, functional brain imaging, BOLD response

Disciplines:Neuropsychology, Neurophysiology, Developmental neuropsychology, Neuropsychology of aging, Social perception and cognition, Biological psychiatry, Paediatrics, Geriatrics