Portable Functional Neuroimaging as an Environmental Epidemiology Tool: A How-To Guide for the Use of fNIRS in Field Studies

Conclusion The overarching goal of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of employing functional neuroimaging in epidemiological studies regardless of the location or the conditions in which the study is taking place. Critically, this is now possible using readily available, portable fNIRS neuroimaging devices to assess neurobehavioral functioning across multiple domains. Most importantly, in our study, the addition of the fNIRS assessment did not interfere with the goals of the ongoing epidemiological study and was seamlessly integrated into daily operations. This paper provides a set of general guidelines that epidemiologists and other researchers may follow to incorporate fNIRS neuroimaging into their own research. As such, many of the solutions we offer are not exhaustive but are instead presented to raise issues that we encountered and to provide the solutions we used for our study. We invite and encourage the reader to seek out more in-depth examinations of the issues we have raised, which include but are not limited to our cited references. As the availability and prevalence of functional neuroimaging in epidemiological studies increases, it is our hope that researchers in the field will use this paper as an introduction to functional neuroimaging as it pertains to their research. Acknowledgments We thank S.K. Sagiv, K. Kogut, and members of the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research at Stanford University for their helpful reviews of the manuscr...
Source: EHP Research - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Brief Communication Source Type: research