AUTHOR=Weibley Hannah , Di Filippo Mina , Liu Xinran , Lazenby Lillian , Goscha Jackson , Ferreira Alyssa , Muscalu Laura , Rader Nancy TITLE=fNIRS Monitoring of Infant Prefrontal Cortex During Crawling and an Executive Functioning Task JOURNAL=Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience VOLUME=15 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.675366 DOI=10.3389/fnbeh.2021.675366 ISSN=1662-5153 ABSTRACT=

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)is a brain-imaging technology used to reveal brain activity by measuring blood oxygenation. Using fNIRS we measured activity in the left prefrontal lobe of 8–14 month-old infants as they crawled or were pushed in a stroller and as they were given a passive attention task or an active executive function (EF) task. For each task, we measured peak total hemoglobin concentration and peak Oxy relative to baseline. Results revealed differences in peak Oxy levels for crawling vs. strolling and between the EF and passive cognitive tasks, with total hemoglobin greater for the EF task than the passive attention task. These results support the theoretical view that both active locomotion and EF engage the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during early development.