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REVIEW article

Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Health and Clinical Neuroscience
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1493880
This article is part of the Research Topic 15 Years of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience: New Insights in Cognitive Neuroscience View all 5 articles

Investigating the acute cognitive effects of dietary compounds using fNIRS: Methodological limitations and perspectives for research targeting healthy adults

Provisionally accepted
Selima Zahar Selima Zahar 1,2*Dimitri Van De Ville Dimitri Van De Ville 1,3Julie Hudry Julie Hudry 2
  • 1 Laboratory of Medical Image Processing, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland
  • 2 Brain Health Department, Nestle Institute of Health Sciences (NIHS), Lausanne, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 3 Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The brain's response to cognitive demands hinges on sufficient blood flow, with changes in brain hemodynamics serving as a reflection of this process. Certain bioactive compounds found in our diet, such as caffeine, polyphenols, and nitrate, can acutely impact brain hemodynamics through diverse neural, vasoactive, and metabolic mechanisms. Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) offers a non-invasive and real-time method to investigate these effects. Despite their potential, fNIRS studies investigating the acute impacts of bioactive compounds on cognition face methodological gaps, especially in controlling confounding factors. Given the impact of these confounding effects, which can be significant due to the relatively limited sample size of such studies, there is a need to refine the methodologies employed. This review proposes recommendations to enhance current methodologies in the research field, focusing on key aspects of the data collection phase, including research design, experimental paradigms, and participant demographics, and their integration into the analysis phase. Ultimately, it seeks to advance our understanding of the effects of bioactive compounds on cognitive functions to contribute to the development of targeted nutritional interventions for improved brain health.

    Keywords: fNIRS, Cognition, nutrition, Intervention Studies, experimental design, processing, Neuroimaging, bioactive (Min.5-Max. 8

    Received: 09 Sep 2024; Accepted: 28 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zahar, Van De Ville and Hudry. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Selima Zahar, Laboratory of Medical Image Processing, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Lausanne, 1015, Vaud, Switzerland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.