Functional near-infrared spectroscopy

fNIRS with a Gowerlabs NTS system

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an optical brain monitoring technique which uses near-infrared spectroscopy for the purpose of functional neuroimaging.[1] Using fNIRS, brain activity is measured by using near-infrared light to estimate cortical hemodynamic activity which occur in response to neural activity. Alongside EEG, fNIRS is one of the most common non-invasive neuroimaging techniques which can be used in portable contexts. The signal is often compared with the BOLD signal measured by fMRI and is capable of measuring changes both in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin concentration,[2] but can only measure from regions near the cortical surface. fNIRS may also be referred to as Optical Topography (OT) and is sometimes referred to simply as NIRS.

  1. ^ Ferrari, Marco; Quaresima, Valentina (November 2012). "A brief review on the history of human functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) development and fields of application". NeuroImage. 63 (2): 921–935. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.03.049. PMID 22510258. S2CID 18367840.
  2. ^ Cui, Xu; Bray, Signe; Bryant, Daniel M.; Glover, Gary H.; Reiss, Allan L. (February 2011). "A quantitative comparison of NIRS and fMRI across multiple cognitive tasks". NeuroImage. 54 (4): 2808–2821. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.10.069. PMC 3021967. PMID 21047559.