A groundbreaking technology employing harmless light waves to monitor brain activity in infants has yielded the most comprehensive insights to date regarding brain functions including hearing, vision, and cognitive processing without relying on a conventional brain scanner.
The brain imaging headgear, designed in partnership with UCL spin-out Gowerlabs, revealed surprising activity in the prefrontal cortex—an area essential for processing emotions—in response to social cues. This suggests that infants may begin to understand social interactions as young as five months old.
This new technique can assess neural activity across the entire outer layer of a baby’s brain. In contrast, an earlier version from the same research group was only capable of monitoring one or two regions at a time.
Researchers believe this innovation could facilitate mapping connections between various brain areas, helping to differentiate between typical and atypical neurodevelopment during critical childhood stages and providing insights into neurodiverse conditions such as autism, dyslexia, and ADHD.
The findings from this new device and initial tests are detailed in a study published in Imaging Neuroscience, which was shared at the British Science Festival on Saturday, September 14.
Dr. Liam Collins-Jones, the lead author from UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering and the University of Cambridge, stated: “We previously created a wearable imaging method that focused on activity in specific brain regions solely.
“This limited our ability to gain an overall understanding because we could only concentrate on isolated areas, whereas, in reality, different brain regions collaboratively function in real-life scenarios.
“The new approach enables us to monitor activity across the entire outer brain surface beneath the scalp, marking significant progress. It opens up avenues for recognizing interactions between various regions and identifying activity in areas we may not have previously considered.
“A more holistic view of brain activity can deepen our understanding of how an infant’s brain operates in relation to its environment, which may help us enhance support for neurodiverse children from an early age.”
Professor Emily Jones, a co-author from Birkbeck, University of London, remarked: “For the first time, we have measured activity differences across such a broad area of an infant’s brain using a wearable device, including areas linked to sound, vision, and emotional processing.
“The technology developed through this study serves as a foundation for better understanding the brain processes behind social development, which we’ve been unable to observe previously, except under the restrictive conditions of MRI scanners.
“With this advancement, we should be able to witness what’s happening in babies’ brains as they play, learn, and engage with others in a more organic manner.”
The device was tested on sixteen infants aged between five to seven months. While wearing the device, the infants sat on their parents’ laps and watched videos of actors singing nursery rhymes to simulate social interaction, as well as videos of moving toys, such as a ball rolling down a ramp, to represent a non-social scenario.
The researchers noted variations in brain activity between the two contexts. Along with the surprising findings in the prefrontal cortex in relation to social cues, they found that brain activity was more concentrated in social scenarios compared to non-social ones, corroborating previous results from optical neuroimaging and MRI studies.
The most effective current means to observe brain activity is through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which typically requires subjects to remain extremely still inside the scanner for potentially over 30 minutes.
However, the limitation of this method is its difficulty in replicating natural interactions, such as engaging with another person or completing a task, especially for infants, who often need to be asleep or restrained to successfully capture their brain activity using MRI.
To address this issue, this team of researchers has recently utilized a form of optical neuroimaging named high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) to create wearable devices that can study brain activity in a more naturalistic setting. Moreover, this technology is also less expensive and more portable than MRI.
In this study, they introduced an HD-DOT optical neuroimaging technique capable of scanning the entire head of an infant.
The device utilized was modified from a commercial system developed by Gowerlabs, a UCL spin-out company established in 2013 by researchers from UCL’s Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory.
Dr. Rob Cooper, a senior author from UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering, commented: “This device exemplifies the synergy between academic research and commercial technology advancements.
“The enduring collaboration between UCL and Gowerlabs, along with our academic partners, has been crucial for the progress of wearable HD-DOT technology.”
