A brand new technology which uses harmless light waves to measure activity in babies’ brains has provided probably the most complete picture so far of brain functions like hearing, vision and cognitive processing outside a standard, restrictive brain scanner, in a brand new study led by researchers at UCL and Birkbeck.
The wearable brain imaging headgear, which was developed in collaboration with UCL spin-out Gowerlabs, found unexpected activity within the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that processes emotions, in response to social stimuli, appearing to substantiate that babies start processing what is occurring to them in social situations as early as five months old.
This latest technology can measure neural activity across the entire outer surface of a baby’s brain. An earlier version developed by the identical team could only measure activity in a single or two parts of a baby’s brain at a time.
The researchers say this technology could help to map the connections between different brain regions and establish what distinguishes typical and atypical neurodevelopment within the crucial early stages of childhood and make clear conditions of neurodiversity similar to autism, dyslexia and ADHD.
The event of the brand new device and the outcomes of early tests are documented in a brand new study, published in Imaging Neuroscience, and presented on the British Science Festival on Saturday, 14 September.
Dr Liam Collins-Jones, first creator of the study from UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering and the University of Cambridge, said: “Previously we developed a wearable imaging approach that would map activity in specific areas of the brain.
“But this made it difficult to get a whole picture as we could only concentrate on one or two areas in isolation, whereas in point of fact different parts of the brain work together when navigating real-world scenarios.
“The brand new method allows us to look at what’s happening across the entire outer brain surface underlying the scalp, which is a giant step forward. It opens up possibilities to identify interactions between different areas and detect activity in areas that we may not have known to have a look at previously.
“This more complete picture of brain activity could enhance our understanding of how the newborn brain functions because it interacts with the encircling world, which could help us optimise support for neurodiverse children early in life.”
Professor Emily Jones, an creator of the study from Birkbeck, University of London, said: “That is the primary time that differences in activity across such a large area of the brain have been measured in babies using a wearable device, including parts of the brain involved in processing sound, vision and emotions.
“The technology developed and tested on this study is a stepping stone towards a greater understanding of the brain processes that underlie social development, which we have not been in a position to observe before, outside of the very restrictive bounds of an MRI scanner.
“With this we must always have the option to see what’s happening in babies’ brains as they play, learn and interact with other people in a really natural way.”
The brand new device was tested on sixteen babies aged five-to-seven months. Wearing the device, the babies sat on their parent’s lap and were shown videos of actors singing nursery rhymes to mimic a social scenario, and videos of moving toys, similar to a ball rolling down a ramp, to mimic a non-social scenario.
The researchers observed differences in brain activity between the 2 scenarios. In addition to the unexpected findings within the pre-frontal cortex observed in response to social stimuli, the researchers found that activity was more localised in response to social stimuli in comparison with non-social stimuli, validating previous findings from optical neuroimaging and MRI studies.
Currently probably the most comprehensive solution to see what is going on on within the human brain is with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which involves the topic lying very still throughout the scanner for potentially half-hour or more.
The downside of this approach is that it’s difficult to mimic natural scenarios, similar to interacting with one other person or performing a task, particularly with infants who would have to be asleep or restrained to ensure that an MRI to successfully image their brain activity.
To assist overcome this, lately this team of researchers have used a type of optical neuroimaging, called high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT), to develop wearable devices which might be in a position to study brain activity more naturally. The technology also has the advantage of being cheaper and more portable than MRI.
In the brand new study, the researchers developed a HD-DOT optical neuroimaging method able to scanning the entire of the infant’s head.
The device utilized in the study was adapted from a industrial system developed by Gowerlabs, a UCL spin-out company that was founded in 2013 by researchers from UCL’s Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory.
Dr Rob Cooper, senior creator of the study from UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering, said: “This device is a terrific example of educational research and industrial technological development working hand-in-hand.
“The long-standing collaboration between UCL and Gowerlabs, together with our academic partners, has been fundamental to the event of wearable HD-DOT technology.”
