New Wearable Brain Imaging Headgear Provides Clearer Picture Of Baby's Brain Activity: Study

The wearable brain imaging headgear, which was developed in collaboration with UCL spin-out Gowerlabs, found unexpected activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that processes emotions, in response to social stimuli, appearing to confirm that babies start processing what is happening to them in social situations as early as five months old.

This latest technology can measure neural activity across the whole outer surface of a baby's brain. An earlier version developed by the same team could only measure activity in one 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 in the crucial early stages of childhood and shed light on conditions of neurodiversity such as autism, dyslexia and ADHD.

The development of the new device and the results of early tests are documented in a new study, published in Imaging Neuroscience.

Dr Liam Collins-Jones, first author of the study from UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering and the University of Cambridge, said: "Previously we developed a wearable imaging approach that could map activity in specific areas of the brain.

"But this made it difficult to get a complete picture as we could only focus on one or two areas in isolation, whereas in reality different parts of the brain work together when navigating real-world scenarios.

"The new method allows us to observe what's happening across the whole outer brain surface underlying the scalp, which is a big step forward. It opens up possibilities to spot interactions between different areas and detect activity in areas that we might not have known to look at previously.

"This more complete picture of brain activity could enhance our understanding of how the baby brain functions as it interacts with the surrounding world, which could help us optimise support for neurodiverse children early in life."

The researchers observed differences in brain activity between the two scenarios. As well as the unexpected findings in the pre-frontal cortex observed in response to social stimuli, the researchers found that activity was more localised in response to social stimuli compared to non-social stimuli, validating previous findings from optical neuroimaging and MRI studies.

In the new study, the researchers developed a high-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) optical neuroimaging method capable of scanning the whole of the infant's head.

Dr Rob Cooper, senior author of the study from UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering, said: "This device is a great example of academic research and commercial technological development working hand-in-hand.”

Reference: Liam H. Collins-Jones, Louisa K. Gossé, Borja Blanco, Chiara Bulgarelli, Maheen Siddiqui, Ernesto E. Vidal-Rosas, Nida Duobaitė, Reuben W. Nixon-Hill, Greg Smith, James Skipper, Tim Sargent, Samuel Powell, Nicholas L. Everdell, Emily J.H. Jones, Robert J. Cooper. Whole-head high-density diffuse optical tomography to map infant audio-visual responses to social and non-social stimuli. Imaging Neuroscience, 2024; 2: 1 DOI: 10.1162/imag_a_00244