Taga Gentaro, Asakawa Kayo, Maki Atsushi, Konishi Yukuo, Koizumi Hideaki
Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 Sep 16;100(19):10722-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1932552100. Epub 2003 Sep 5.
Studies of young infants are critical to understand perceptual, motor, and cognitive processing in humans. However, brain mechanisms involved are poorly understood, because the use of brain-imaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging in awake infants is difficult. In the present study we show functional brain imaging of awake infants viewing visual stimuli by means of multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy, a technique that permits a measurement of cerebral hemoglobin oxygenation in response to brain activation through the intact skull without subject constraint. We found that event-related increases in oxyhemoglobin were evident in localized areas of the occipital cortex of infants aged 2-4 months in response to a brief presentation of a checkerboard pattern reversal while they maintained fixation to attention-grabbing stimuli. The dynamic change in cerebral blood oxygenation was qualitatively similar to that observed in the adult brain. This result introduces near-infrared optical topography as a method for investigating the functional development of the brain in early infancy.
对幼儿的研究对于理解人类的感知、运动和认知过程至关重要。然而，由于在清醒婴儿中使用诸如功能磁共振成像等脑成像方法存在困难，因此所涉及的脑机制仍知之甚少。在本研究中，我们通过多通道近红外光谱技术展示了清醒婴儿观看视觉刺激时的功能性脑成像，该技术能够在不限制受试者的情况下，通过完整颅骨测量因脑激活而产生的脑血红蛋白氧合情况。我们发现，在2至4个月大的婴儿枕叶皮质的局部区域，当他们注视吸引注意力的刺激物时，短暂呈现棋盘格图案反转会导致与事件相关的氧合血红蛋白增加。脑血氧合的动态变化在性质上与在成人大脑中观察到的相似。这一结果引入了近红外光学地形图作为研究婴儿早期脑功能发育的一种方法。
