Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) delivers a flexible, portable, and wearable technique for monitoring brain function in situations where fMRI is not feasible, not suitable, or inaccessible. However, variations in optode locations and head shapes and sizes throughout development lead to considerable challenges in group-based and longitudinal studies that generally use either channel-focused analyses or image reconstruction techniques that require strong participant-atlas correspondence. We present a scalp-based parcellation technique that compensates for variation in optode array placement and general head morphology and accounts for fNIRS spatial sampling with minimal assumptions about the underlying head and brain structure to support robust statistical analyses.
KEYWORDS: Near infrared spectroscopy, Analytical research, Neurophotonics, Neuroimaging, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Data processing, Data acquisition, Reflection, Peer review, Electroencephalography
Open science practices work to increase methodological rigor, transparency, and replicability of published findings. We aim to reflect on what the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) community has done to promote open science practices in fNIRS research and set goals to accomplish over the next 10 years.
Despite the importance of our ability to interact and communicate with others, the early development of the social brain network remains poorly understood. We examined brain activity in 12- to 14-month-old infants while they were interacting live with an adult in two different naturalistic social scenarios (i.e., reading a picture book versus singing nursery rhymes with gestures), as compared to baseline (i.e., showing infants a toy without eye contact or speech). We used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recorded over the right temporal lobe of infants to assess the role of the superior temporal sulcus-temporoparietal junction (STS-TPJ) region during naturalistic social interactions. We observed increased cortical activation in the STS-TPJ region to live social stimuli in both socially engaging conditions compared to baseline during real life interaction, with greater activation evident for the joint attention (reading book) condition relative to the social nursery rhymes. These results supported the view that the STS-TPJ region, engaged in the cortical social brain network, is already specialized in infants for processing social signals and is sensitive to communicative situations. This study also highlighted the potential of fNIRS for studying brain function in infants entering toddlerhood during live social interaction.
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