Auditory cortex measurement with fNIRS

A little while ago we received an interesting request to measure both the temporal lobe and frontal lobe simultaneously in children with behavioral disabilities. The setup time needs to be reduced to an absolute minimum due to the behavioral nature of these children. To realize this, we came up with a combination of two of our devices, the Octamon and the Oxymon. With the Octamon the whole frontal lobe can be measured with virtually no setup time, while the Oxymon is capable of measuring in hairy areas like the temporal lobe.

As a prove of concept the auditory cortex was engaged using an auditory task. In this single participant pilot study, an activation of the auditory cortex located in the temporal lobe was observed while no major changes in oxygenation in the frontal lobe are visible. After approximately 5 seconds a clear hemodynamic response can be seen in the temporal lobe near the auditory cortex while the frontal lobe remains almost constant.

This is an example of two Artinis devices working together simultaneously, producing one single synchronized data file which can be assessed with our proprietary Oxysoft software. This can be done with any combination of Artinis devices, enabling e.g. combining simultaneous brain and muscle measurements using NIRS.

Video information:

The data has been projected to the MNI-ICBM-152 (2009) template, the time range is sped up by a factor two, the position of transmitters and receivers are estimates and the color scale is optimized for contrast. This is a single participant pilot experiment, no conclusions should be drawn based on this data.