ABSTRACT
Functional imaging is typically conducted in an eort to understand the activity in a given brain region in terms of its relationship to a particular behavioral state, or its interactions with inputs from another region’s activity. e advances in noninvasive functional brain monitoring technologies provide opportunities to accurately examine the living brains of large groups of subjects over long periods of time, with little impact on their well-being. Neurophysiological and neuroimaging technologies have contributed much to our understanding of normative brain function, as well as to our understanding of the neural underpinnings of various neurological and psychiatric disorders. Commonly employed techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), event-related brain potentials (ERPs), magnetoencephalography (MEG), positron emission tomography (PET), single-positron emission computed tomography (SPECT), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have dramatically increased our understanding of a broad range of brain disorders. Nevertheless, there is still much unknown about these syndromes. is is due, in large part, to the inherent complexity of the neurobiological substrates of these disorders and of the mind itself. In addition, each of the research methods used to study brain function and its disorders have methodological strengths as well as their own inherent limitations. ese limitations place constraints on our ability to fully explicate the neural basis of neurological and psychiatric disorders both inside and outside of the laboratory setting, and to use the information gleaned from laboratory studies
6.1 Introduction ...................................................................................... 6-1 6.2 Working Principles ........................................................................... 6-2
6.3 Instrumentation ................................................................................6-4 6.4 fNIR Measurements .........................................................................6-5
6.7 Conclusion .......................................................................................6-28 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................6-28 References ....................................................................................................6-28
for clinical applications in real-world environments. New techniques that allow data to be gathered under more diverse circumstances than is possible with extant neuroimaging systems should facilitate a more thorough understanding of brain function and its pathologies.
