Cognitive neuroscience is a multidisciplinary field focused on the exploration of the neural substrates underlying cognitive functions; it originated in the early 1980s from the connection between neuroscience and cognitive science although over the years it has constantly been enriched by an increasing interaction with several other disciplines, 1 such as neuro physiology, neuroanatomy, neuropsychology, psychophysiology and computational modelling. Nowadays, cognitive neuro science represents a prominent field in the investigation of the human brain. Due to its multidisciplinary nature, cognitive neuroscience adopts several investigation methods, such as lesion studies, multiunit and singlecell recording; never theless, the most remarkable progress in understanding the relationship between brain and cognition has been made with functional brain imaging methods.Before the advent of brain imaging, the association between brain regions and cognitive functions was mainly provided by clinical neuropsychological investigations of braindamaged patients and postmortem examination. When brain imaging was introduced, cognitive scientists were given the chance to investigate the human brain in a wide variety of actions, from perception to higher order mental activities. With brain Cognitive neuroscience is a multidisciplinary field focused on the exploration of the neural substrates underlying cognitive functions; the most remarkable progress in understanding the relationship between brain and cognition has been made with functional brain imaging. Functional near infrared (fNIR) spectroscopy is a non-invasive brain imaging technique that measures the variation of oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin at high temporal resolution. Stemming from the first pioneering experiments, the use of fNIR spectroscopy in cognitive neuroscience has constantly increased. Here, we present a brief review of the fNIR spectroscopy investigations in the cognitive neuroscience field. The topics discussed encompass the classical issues in cognitive neuroscience, such as the exploration of the neural correlates of vision, language, memory, attention and executive functions. Other relevant research topics are introduced in order to show the strengths and the limitations of fNIR spectroscopy, as well as its potential in the biomedical field. This review is intended to provide a general view of the wide variety of optical imaging applications in the field of cognitive neuroscience. The increasing body of studies and the constant technical improvement suggest that fNIR spectroscopy is a versatile and promising instrument to investigate the neural correlates of human cognition.
The aim of this study was to assess the prefrontal cortex (PFC) oxygenation response to a 5-min incremental tilt board balance task (ITBBT) in a semi-immersive virtual reality (VR) environment driven by a depth-sensing camera. It was hypothesized that the PFC would be bilaterally activated in response to the increase of the ITBBT difficulty, given the PFC involvement in the allocation of the attentional resources to maintain postural control. Twenty-two healthy male subjects were asked to use medial-lateral postural sways to maintain their equilibrium on a virtual tilt board (VTB) balancing over a pivot. When the subject was unable to maintain the VTB angle within ± 35° the VTB became red (error). An eight-channel fNIRS system was employed for measuring changes in PFC oxygenated-deoxygenated hemoglobin (O2Hb-HHb, respectively). Results revealed that the number of the performed board sways and errors augmented with the increasing of the ITBBT difficulty. A PFC activation was observed with a tendency to plateau for both O2Hb-HHb changes within the last 2 min of the task. A significant main effect of the level of difficulty was found in O2Hb and HHb (p < 0.001). The study has demonstrated that the oxygenation increased over the PFC while the subject was performing an ITBBT in a semi-immersive VR environment. This increase was modulated by the task difficulty, suggesting that the PFC is bilaterally involved in attention-demanding tasks. This task could be considered useful for diagnostic testing and functional neurorehabilitation given its adaptability in elderly and in patients with movement disorders.
Models of the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect-faster responses to small numbers using left effectors, and the converse for large numbers-diverge substantially in localizing the root cause of this effect along the numbers' processing chain. One class of models ascribes the cause of the SNARC effect to the inherently spatial nature of the semantic representation of numerical magnitude. A different class of models ascribes the effect's cause to the processing dynamics taking place during response selection. To disentangle these opposing views, we devised a paradigm combining magnitude comparison and stimulus-response switching in order to monitor modulations of the SNARC effect while concurrently tapping both semantic and response-related processing stages. We observed that the SNARC effect varied nonlinearly as a function of both manipulated factors, a result that can hardly be reconciled with a unitary cause of the SNARC effect.
Encoding, storage and retrieval constitute three fundamental stages in information processing and memory. They allow for the creation of new memory traces, the maintenance and the consolidation of these traces over time, and the access and recover of the stored information from short or long-term memory. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a non-invasive neuroimaging technique that measures concentration changes of oxygenated-hemoglobin (O2Hb) and deoxygenated-hemoglobin (HHb) in cortical microcirculation blood vessels by means of the characteristic absorption spectra of hemoglobin in the near-infrared range. In the present study, we monitored, using a 16-channel fNIRS system, the hemodynamic response during the encoding and retrieval processes (EP and RP, respectively) over the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of 13 healthy subjects (27.2 ± 2.6 years) while were performing the “Logical Memory Test” (LMT) of the Wechsler Memory Scale. A LMT-related PFC activation was expected; specifically, it was hypothesized a neural dissociation between EP and RP. The results showed a heterogeneous O2Hb/HHb response over the mapped area during the EP and the RP, with a O2Hb progressive and prominent increment in ventrolateral PFC (VLPFC) since the beginning of the EP. During the RP a broader activation, including the VLPFC, the dorsolateral PFC and the frontopolar cortex, was observed. This could be explained by the different contributions of the PFC regions in the EP and the RP. Considering the fNIRS applicability for the hemodynamic monitoring during the LMT performance, this study has demonstrated that fNIRS could be utilized as a valuable clinical diagnostic tool, and that it has the potential to be adopted in patients with cognitive disorders or slight working memory deficits.
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a non-invasive vascular-based functional neuroimaging technology that can assess, simultaneously from multiple cortical areas, concentration changes in oxygenated-deoxygenated hemoglobin at the level of the cortical microcirculation blood vessels. fNIRS, with its high degree of ecological validity and its very limited requirement of physical constraints to subjects, could represent a valid tool for monitoring cortical responses in the research field of neuroergonomics. In virtual reality (VR) real situations can be replicated with greater control than those obtainable in the real world. Therefore, VR is the ideal setting where studies about neuroergonomics applications can be performed. The aim of the present study was to investigate, by a 20-channel fNIRS system, the dorsolateral/ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC/VLPFC) in subjects while performing a demanding VR hand-controlled task (HCT). Considering the complexity of the HCT, its execution should require the attentional resources allocation and the integration of different executive functions. The HCT simulates the interaction with a real, remotely-driven, system operating in a critical environment. The hand movements were captured by a high spatial and temporal resolution 3-dimensional (3D) hand-sensing device, the LEAP motion controller, a gesture-based control interface that could be used in VR for tele-operated applications. Fifteen University students were asked to guide, with their right hand/forearm, a virtual ball (VB) over a virtual route (VROU) reproducing a 42 m narrow road including some critical points. The subjects tried to travel as long as possible without making VB fall. The distance traveled by the guided VB was 70.2 ± 37.2 m. The less skilled subjects failed several times in guiding the VB over the VROU. Nevertheless, a bilateral VLPFC activation, in response to the HCT execution, was observed in all the subjects. No correlation was found between the distance traveled by the guided VB and the corresponding cortical activation. These results confirm the suitability of fNIRS technology to objectively evaluate cortical hemodynamic changes occurring in VR environments. Future studies could give a contribution to a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underlying human performance either in expert or non-expert operators during the simulation of different demanding/fatiguing activities.
The present study has revealed a particular involvement of the VLPFC in the execution of the novel proposed semi-immersive VMT adoptable in the neurorehabilitation field.
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