Spatiotemporal properties of cortical haemodynamic response to auditory stimuli in sleeping infants revealed by multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy

Multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has been used as a neuroimaging tool to study functional activation of the developing brain in infants. In this paper, we focus on spatiotemporal dynamics of cortical oxygenation changes during sensory processing in young infants. We use a 94-channel NIRS system to assess the activity of wide regions of the cortex in quietly sleeping three-month-old infants. Auditory stimuli composed of a random sequence of pure tones induced haemodynamic changes not only in the temporal auditory regions, but also in the occipital and frontal regions. Analyses of phase synchronization showed that mutual synchronizations of signal changes among the cortical regions were much stronger than the stimulus-induced synchronizations of signal changes. Furthermore, analyses of phase differences among cortical regions revealed phase advancement of the bilateral temporal auditory regions, and phase gradient in a posterior direction from the temporal auditory regions to the occipital regions and in an anterior direction within the frontal regions. We argue that multi-channel NIRS is capable of detecting the precise timing of cortical activation and its flow in the global network of the developing brain.