"Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) could help bridge this gap-not as a total solution, but as a tool to link brain activity patterns with mental function for treatment planning, monitoring, and fine-tuning. Key advantages include portability, movement tolerance, and safety for repeated measures. Unlike fMRI, fNIRS can be worn during naturalistic behavior, improving ecological validity, and may be less sensitive to artifacts in some regards than EEG."
"fNIRS exploits the fact that oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin absorb near-infrared light differently. Light sources and detectors on the scalp emit and capture wavelengths roughly between 650-1,200 nm, penetrating into cortical tissue about 2-3 cm (Chen et al., 2020). When neurons activate, oxygen use rises, followed by a compensatory increase in blood flow that typically overshoots demand. This "neurovascular coupling" yields increased oxygenated and decreased deoxygenated hemoglobin at active sites, allowing inference about which cortical areas are engaged during tasks or mental states."
Psychiatry currently lacks continuous, real-time measures of brain function, relying primarily on subjective reports, behavioral observation, standardized measures, and occasional static scans. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measures cortical hemodynamics by detecting oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin via near-infrared light, penetrating 2–3 cm into cortex. fNIRS is portable, tolerant of movement, and safe for repeated use, allowing monitoring during naturalistic behavior and improving ecological validity compared with fMRI. fNIRS provides finer spatial specificity for cortical hemodynamics than EEG at slower timescales, and combined EEG–fNIRS approaches can support precision interventional psychiatry and machine-learning–driven analyses.
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