The past few decades have seen a rapid increase in the use of functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in cognitive neuroscience. This fast growth is due to the several advances that fNIRS ...offers over the other neuroimaging modalities such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography/magnetoencephalography. In particular, fNIRS is harmless, tolerant to bodily movements, and highly portable, being suitable for all possible participant populations, from newborns to the elderly and experimental settings, both inside and outside the laboratory. In this review we aim to provide a comprehensive and state‐of‐the‐art review of fNIRS basics, technical developments, and applications. In particular, we discuss some of the open challenges and the potential of fNIRS for cognitive neuroscience research, with a particular focus on neuroimaging in naturalistic environments and social cognitive neuroscience.
The past few decades have seen a rapid increase in the use of functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in cognitive neuroscience. In our review, we aim to provide a comprehensive and state‐of‐the‐art review of fNIRS basics, technical developments, and applications. In particular, we discuss some of the open challenges and the potential of fNIRS for cognitive neuroscience research, with a particular focus on neuroimaging in naturalistic environments and social cognitive neuroscience.
Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been widely used for neural decoding, linking neural signals to control devices. Hybrid BCI systems using electroencephalography (EEG) and ...functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) have received significant attention for overcoming the limitations of EEG- and fNIRS-standalone BCI systems. However, most hybrid EEG-fNIRS BCI studies have focused on late fusion because of discrepancies in their temporal resolutions and recording locations. Despite the enhanced performance of hybrid BCIs, late fusion methods have difficulty in extracting correlated features in both EEG and fNIRS signals. Therefore, in this study, we proposed a deep learning-based early fusion structure, which combines two signals before the fully-connected layer, called the fNIRS-guided attention network (FGANet). First, 1D EEG and fNIRS signals were converted into 3D EEG and fNIRS tensors to spatially align EEG and fNIRS signals at the same time point. The proposed fNIRS-guided attention layer extracted a joint representation of EEG and fNIRS tensors based on neurovascular coupling, in which the spatially important regions were identified from fNIRS signals, and detailed neural patterns were extracted from EEG signals. Finally, the final prediction was obtained by weighting the sum of the prediction scores of the EEG and fNIRS-guided attention features to alleviate performance degradation owing to delayed fNIRS response. In the experimental results, the FGANet significantly outperformed the EEG-standalone network. Furthermore, the FGANet has 4.0% and 2.7% higher accuracy than the state-of-the-art algorithms in mental arithmetic and motor imagery tasks, respectively.
Les malades de Parkinson (MP) présentent des troubles de la marche, des fonctions exécutives et de l’attention. Le cortex préfrontal (CPF) intervient dans le contrôle de la marche et la coordination ...des ressources attentionnelles.
Notre objectif consistait à analyser, chez des séniors sains et des MP, les effets de l’orientation de l’attention sur les paramètres de marche, l’activation du CPF et la charge mentale perçue.
Les participants (24 seniors et 7 MP) ont réalisé 4 tâches de marche avec focalisation interne (sur le mouvement de leurs pieds) ou externe (lignes sur le sol) ou divisée (série de soustractions) ou sans consigne d’attention, à vitesse normale, à raison de 4 essais pour chacune. Nous avons évalué les paramètres de marche grâce à des semelles connectées, l’activation du CPF par technique de spectroscopie fonctionnelle dans le proche infrarouge (fNIRS), la charge mentale perçue à partir du test NASA-TLX.
Nos résultats ont montré que l’attention divisée entraînait, dans les deux populations, une dégradation des paramètres de marche. Cependant, contrairement aux seniors, ils étaient significativement améliorés lors de la focalisation externe de l’attention chez les MP. L’attention divisée et l’attention interne ont entraîné une activation significative (respectivement, p=0,002 et p=0,02) du CPF droit et une perception accrue de l’exigence mentale chez les MP.
Ces derniers ont tendance à employer une stratégie protectrice entraînant une augmentation de la focalisation interne de l’attention, accroissant elle-même le risque de chute. Au contraire, l’attention externe favorisant un mouvement automatisé est utilisée dans l’indiçage. L’attention divisée entraîne une grande demande en ressources attentionnelles entraînant la mise en place d’un mécanisme compensatoire avec activation du CPF et détérioration de la marche.
Les facteurs attentionnels et la possibilité offerte par la fNIRS d’évaluer les effets de la rééducation sur la neuroplasticité sont à considérer dans le cadre de stratégies pour améliorer la mobilité et réduire le risque de chute.
•Active listening is an important part of interpersonal emotion regulation.•When individuals were engaged in active listening, the OFC, left dlPFC, right dlPFC, and right TPJ were significantly ...activated in the participant whose emotions were regulated, whereas the OFC, left dlPFC, and right TPJ were significantly activated in the emotion regulator.•Band analysis showed significant IBS increments in the mPFC, OFC, right dlPFC, right TPJ, and left dlPFC at different frequencies when individuals were engaged in active listening.
Hyperscanning refers to simultaneously recording the brain activity of two or more people participating in the same cognitive activity to reveal the underlying processes. Active listening is a necessary and important part of interpersonal emotional regulation; however, few studies have addressed the corresponding brain activity. Therefore, this study aims to explore the regulatory effect of active listening and changes in the brain using functional near-infrared optical spectroscopy(fNIRS) in real situations requiring interpersonal emotional regulation. Behavioral results show that active listening has a significant effect on improving individuals’ negative emotions. According to the neuroimaging results, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (right dlPFC), right temporoparietal junction (right TPJ), and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (left dlPFC) were significantly activated. In addition, band analysis showed interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) increments at the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), right dlPFC, right TPJ, and left dlPFC at different frequencies. Measurements of IBS and behavioral coherence showed that the increases of IBS at the OFC, right dlPFC, right TPJ, and left dlPFC were not significantly correlated with depression, anxiety, and the empathy level of the emotional regulator. The present study provides brain imaging evidence for the effectiveness of active listening in interpersonal emotional regulation.
Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) have emerged as continuous monitoring techniques for neural cluster electrical activity and local cerebral hemodynamic ...activity, playing a crucial role in both basic scientific research and clinical applications. However, the progress of many neuroscience studies is hindered by limitations in instrument size, portability, synchronous acquisition, and mobility. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes an integrated system comprising 112 fNIRS channels and 16 EEG channels. The characteristic of this system is its support for measurements under mobile conditions, and the scalable design of the sensor cap allows for flexible configuration of EEG and fNIRS sensors in different experiments. A corresponding upper computer software was developed to monitor brain activity in real time. Noise and drift tests demonstrate that the instrument we designed meets the requirements for physiological signal acquisition. In visual evoked experiments, the local hemodynamic changes and visual evoked potentials of the subjects show good consistency with the experimental results reported in the literature, indicating that the proposed EEG-fNIRS acquisition system can simultaneously monitor both brain electrical activity and hemodynamic changes.
•The mother-child dyads of ODD children exhibit lower neural synchrony across of parent-child interactions (positive, negative, and neutral).•The neural synchrony between mother and child was ...negatively associated ODD symptoms in children.•Various neural synchronies (positive, negative, and neutral) between mother and child all play a role in the network of ODD symptoms in children.
Interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) between mothers and children responds to the temporal similarity of brain signals in joint behavior between dyadic partners and is considered an important neural indicator of the formation of adaptive social interaction bonds. Parent-child interactions are particularly important for the development and maintenance of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) in children, but the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms are unknown. Therefore, in the current study we measured INS between mothers and children in interactions by using simultaneous functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), and explored its association with ODD symptoms in children. Seventy-two mother-child dyads were recruited to participate in the study, including 35 children with ODD and 37 healthy children to be used as a control. Each mother-child dyad was measured for neural activity in frontal, parietal, and temporal lobe regions while completing free-play as well as positive, and negative topic discussion tasks. We used Phase-locked value to calculate the synchrony strength and then used the K-means algorithm and k-space based alignment tests to confirm the specific patterns of parent-child synchrony in different brain areas. The results showed that, in free-play (right MFG and bilateral SFG), positive (left TPJ and bilateral SFGdor), and negative (bilateral SFGmed, right ANG, and left MFG) topic discussions, the mother-child pairs showed different patterns of INS. These specific INS patterns were significantly lower in the ODD group compared to the control group and were negatively associated with ODD symptoms in children. Network analyses showed that these INS patterns were connected to different nodes in the ODD symptom network. Our findings suggest that ODD mother-child dyads exhibit lower neural synchrony across a wide range of parent-child interactions. Neural synchrony in the context of interpersonal interactions provides new insights into understanding the neural mechanisms of ODD and can be used as an indicator of neural and socio-environmental factors in the network of psychological disorder symptoms.
The present post-hoc analysis of two independent studies conducted in different laboratories aimed at comparing reactions of stress activation systems in response to two different psychosocial stress ...induction paradigms. Both paradigms are based on the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and suited for neuroimaging environments. In an in-depth analysis, data from 67 participants (36 men, 31 women) from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study implementing ScanSTRESS were compared with data from a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study implementing the so-called ’fNIRS-TSST’ including 45 participants (8 men, 37 women). We tested the equivalence of correlation patterns between the stress response measures cortisol, heart rate, affect, and neural responses in the two samples. Moreover, direct comparisons of affective and neural responses were made. Similar correlation structures were identified for all stress activation systems, except for neural contrasts of paradigm conditions (stress vs. control) showing significant differences in association with cortisol, heart rate, and affective variables between the two samples. Furthermore, both stress paradigms elicited comparable affective and cortical stress responses. Apart from methodological differences (e.g., procedure, timing of the paradigms) the present analysis suggests that both paradigms are capable of inducing moderate acute psychosocial stress to a comparable extent with regard to affective and cortical stress responses. Moreover, similar association structures between different stress response systems were found in both studies. Thus, depending on the study objective and the respective advantages of each imaging approach, both paradigms have demonstrated their usefulness for future studies.
•comparison of correlation structures between specific stress response systems.•TSST-based paradigms for imaging environments: ScanSTRESS and fNIRS-TSST.•correlation patterns were similar for cortisol, heart rate, affect, and neural responses.•comparable affective and cortical stress responses were found.•both paradigms have demonstrated their usefulness for future studies.
Previous research has revealed that patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have negative biases in various aspects of information processing, and these biases are mainly manifested in ...recognizing facial expressions. However, the link between this emotional cognitive inhibition and neural activation mechanisms in cortical brain regions remains poorly understood. Therefore, this study employed functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to explore the potential impaired regions and neural mechanisms associated with facial emotion cognition in MDD patients.
37 MDD patients and 34 healthy controls (HC) were recruited to participate in three sets of cognitive tasks for emotion recognition, and the cortical activation in the brain was synchronously recorded using multi-channel fNIRS.
During tasks requiring the motions identification of sad versus happy emotional states, MDD patients exhibit altered activation in both the left frontopolar cortex (FPC) and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Notably, the FPC demonstrates a higher level of internal coherence and broader correlation with other cortical areas. Moreover, MDD patients showed lower accuracy in distinguishing emotional cues associated with sadness versus those associated with neutral and happy emotions.
The study had a relatively small sample size, and it specifically examined only three prevalent facial expressions.
Facial expression recognition in MDD patients is characterized by negative cognitive interpretation of expressions, which are associated with various cortical altered activations. Neuroimaging further suggests that the cognitive inhibition of emotion signal recognition in everyday interpersonal interactions in MDD patients may primarily be influenced by activation in the left FPC.
•Patients with MDD tend to recognize facial expressions in a negative manner.•The fNIRS can monitor cortical changes in emotional cognitive function in MDD patients.•The activation of FPC and DLPFC in MDD patients is related to emotional cognitive function.•The FPC is a crucial region for MDD patients to execute facial emotion cognitive function.•The FPC is linked to the DLPFC, FEF, and Broca in relation to emotional cognitive functions.
Whether in performing arts, sporting, or everyday contexts, when we watch others move, we tend to enjoy bodies moving in synchrony. Our enjoyment of body movements is further enhanced by our own ...prior experience with performing those movements, or our ‘embodied experience’. The relationships between movement synchrony and enjoyment, as well as embodied experience and movement enjoyment, are well known. The interaction between enjoyment of movements, synchrony, and embodiment is less well understood, and may be central for developing new approaches for enriching social interaction. To examine the interplay between movement enjoyment, synchrony, and embodiment, we asked participants to copy another person's movements as accurately as possible, thereby gaining embodied experience of movement sequences. Participants then viewed other dyads performing the same or different sequences synchronously, and we assessed participants' recognition of having performed these sequences, as well as their enjoyment of each movement sequence. We used functional near‐infrared spectroscopy to measure cortical activation over frontotemporal sensorimotor regions while participants performed and viewed movements. We found that enjoyment was greatest when participants had mirrored the sequence and recognised it, suggesting that awareness of embodiment may be central to enjoyment of synchronous movements. Exploratory analyses of relationships between cortical activation and enjoyment and recognition implicated the sensorimotor cortices, which subserve action observation and aesthetic processing. These findings hold implications for clinical research and therapies seeking to foster successful social interaction.
We examine how embodiment gained through physically mirroring another person's movements can modulate observers' enjoyment of synchronous movements performed by dyads. The findings demonstrate how observers' ability to recognize movement sequences they have mirrored (i.e., embodied), predicts their enjoyment of the same movements performed synchronously by others, and further predicts activation of sensorimotor brain areas associated movement prediction and matching (i.e., imitation).
This study applied the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate frontal activity in autism when performing verbal fluency test and emotion recall task. We recruited 32 autistic ...adults without intellectual disability and 30 typically-developing controls (TDC). Prefrontal hemodynamic changes were evaluated by fNIRS when the participants performed the verbal fluency test and emotion recall task. fNIRS signals in the prefrontal cortex were compared between autism and TDC. Compared to TDC, autistic adults showed comparable performance on the verbal fluency test but exhibited lower frontal activity on the vegetable category. In the verbal fluency test, left frontal activity in TDC significantly increased in the vegetable category (vs. fruit category). In the emotion recall task, left frontal activity increased significantly in TDC when recalling emotional (vs. neutral) events. This increase of left frontal activity on the more difficult works was not found in autism. Similarly, brain activities were related to test performance only in TDC but not in autism. In addition, more severe social deficits were associated with lower frontal activity when recalling emotional events, independent of autism diagnosis. Findings suggested reduced frontal activity in autism, as compared to TDC, when performing verbal fluency tests. The reduction of left frontal activation in verbal fluency test and emotion recall tasks might reflect on the social deficits of the individual. The fNIRS may potentially be applied in assessing frontal lobe function in autism and social deficits in general population. Trial registration number: NCT04010409.
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