Studying hemispheric lateralization during a Stroop task through near-infrared spectroscopy-based connectivity

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a developing and promising functional brain imaging technology. Developing data analysis methods to effectively extract meaningful information from collected data is the major bottleneck in popularizing this technology. In this study, we measured hemodynamic activity of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during a color-word matching Stroop task using NIRS. Hemispheric lateralization was examined by employing traditional activation and novel NIRS-based connectivity analyses simultaneously. Wavelet transform coherence was used to assess intrahemispheric functional connectivity. Spearman correlation analysis was used to examine the relationship between behavioral performance and activation/functional connectivity, respectively. In agreement with activation analysis, functional connectivity analysis revealed leftward lateralization for the Stroop effect and correlation with behavioral performance. However, functional connectivity was more sensitive than activation for identifying hemispheric lateralization. Granger causality was used to evaluate the effective connectivity between hemispheres. The results showed increased information flow from the left to the right hemispheres for the incongruent versus the neutral task, indicating a leading role of the left PFC. This study demonstrates that the NIRS-based connectivity can reveal the functional architecture of the brain more comprehensively than traditional activation, helping to better utilize the advantages of NIRS.

Single-trial classification of near-infrared spectroscopy signals arising from multiple cortical regions

“…Bilateral activation in the superior [27,33,34] and inferior [27,33,35] parietal lobule (BA7, BA 40) has also been detected. Although cortical activity induced by the Stroop task has been detected using prefrontal NIRS measurements [36][37][38], this task has not been considered in NIRS-BCI applications to date.…”

Partial correlation-based functional connectivity analysis for functional near-infrared spectroscopy signals

“…The TH value shows that the highest significance was observed for TH ¼ 21 for [HbO], which corresponds to 8.75% of the highest correlations when the diagonals are omitted (21/240) and TH ¼ 24 for [Hb] data. In a study by Zhang et al, 30 matrix. Table 2 shows the change of GE with respect to different stimuli for different areas of the PFC.…”

“…In many of fMRI and fNIRS studies, PC is considered as a suitable criterion for investigation and understanding of brain FC. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] FC studies using fNIRS have been conducted recently 17,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] and have further been linked to graph theoretical approaches. 32 Similarly, FC analysis with the PC approach has been proposed both by our group and others.…”

Functional imaging of cognition in an old-old population: A case for portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy

“…Although this is more superficial than other modalities such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this still allows for measurements from most cognitive regions of the cortex. Previously, fNIRS has been used to investigate a variety of cognitive tasks [11–16](reviewed in [17]) and has particular utility in child populations where more traditional MRI methods are difficult (reviewed in [18]). Consequently, the use of fNIRS for investigating cognitive function in a setting outside of the laboratory, such as in RCCs, may be a useful application.…”