About this Research Topic
While we have gained a greater understanding of brain function in single-snapshot experiments under restricted lab settings, we are only beginning to understand how it works in dynamic, complex, and multisensory real-world environments. Mobile brain imaging tools are emerging that can continuously link brain activity to human movement, perception, cognition, social communication, and interaction in naturalistic environments. These tools have the potential to provide profound insights into how the healthy brain works and develops, as well as when and why breakdowns occur. Progress in this field brings real-world applications of neurotechnology, e.g., in neuromonitoring, neuroergonomics and neuroadaptive systems, closer within reach.
Optical technologies, such as continuous wave and time domain functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), are making rapid progress toward becoming widely available, wearable, and unobtrusive brain activity monitoring tools. Beyond fNIRS, entirely new optical technologies are emerging. While this new infrastructure increasingly enables multisensory and naturalistic brain-imaging experiments, it also comes with many challenges such as data acquisition under more complex conditions, incorporation of context-sensitivity and peripheral physiology into analysis methods offline as well as in real time, analysis of brain signals from multisensory stimuli, and lower contrast to noise ratio in the measured brain responses. Novel methods, experimental paradigms, and instrumentation are needed to robustly extract brain activity under these challenges.
The scope of this research topic is to gather advances, challenges, strengths, and limitations of non-invasive optical sensing technologies for mobile activity monitoring of the embodied brain under naturalistic settings. These include:
1. Innovative experimental paradigms and applications of mobile optical sensing for brain activity monitoring - alone or in combination with non-optical modalities such as Electroencephalography (EEG).
2. New instrumentation approaches in the domains of fNIRS and oximetry that enable mobile brain activity monitoring including but not limited to wearable fNIRS, high-density diffuse optical tomography (DOT), and wearable time-domain fNIRS.
3. Newly emerging wearable optical sensing technologies (e.g., optically pumped magnetometers, diffuse correlation spectroscopy, speckle contrast optical spectroscopy, etc.).
4. Novel data analysis approaches for multisensory and naturalistic brain-imaging data (e.g. fusion and analysis of multimodal, multivariate data streams, artifact rejection, physiological modeling, and methods to tackle non-stationary brain responses).
Optical technologies, such as continuous wave and time domain functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), are making rapid progress toward becoming widely available, wearable, and unobtrusive brain activity monitoring tools. Beyond fNIRS, entirely new optical technologies are emerging. While this new infrastructure increasingly enables multisensory and naturalistic brain-imaging experiments, it also comes with many challenges such as data acquisition under more complex conditions, incorporation of context-sensitivity and peripheral physiology into analysis methods offline as well as in real time, analysis of brain signals from multisensory stimuli, and lower contrast to noise ratio in the measured brain responses. Novel methods, experimental paradigms, and instrumentation are needed to robustly extract brain activity under these challenges.
The scope of this research topic is to gather advances, challenges, strengths, and limitations of non-invasive optical sensing technologies for mobile activity monitoring of the embodied brain under naturalistic settings. These include:
1. Innovative experimental paradigms and applications of mobile optical sensing for brain activity monitoring - alone or in combination with non-optical modalities such as Electroencephalography (EEG).
2. New instrumentation approaches in the domains of fNIRS and oximetry that enable mobile brain activity monitoring including but not limited to wearable fNIRS, high-density diffuse optical tomography (DOT), and wearable time-domain fNIRS.
3. Newly emerging wearable optical sensing technologies (e.g., optically pumped magnetometers, diffuse correlation spectroscopy, speckle contrast optical spectroscopy, etc.).
4. Novel data analysis approaches for multisensory and naturalistic brain-imaging data (e.g. fusion and analysis of multimodal, multivariate data streams, artifact rejection, physiological modeling, and methods to tackle non-stationary brain responses).
Keywords: fNIRS, mobile brain imaging, multimodal analysis, diffuse optics
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