Using broadband near-infrared spectroscopy to measure the functioning of the social brain in infancy

在生命的前五年中，婴儿从被动接受照顾转变为主动塑造他们的社会世界。在这段时间里，他们发展并运用了广泛的社交技能，包括语言、模仿、同理心、合作、轮流和富有想象力的游戏。他们是怎么做到的？虽然我们已经详细描绘了这些技能的行为发展，但我们对支撑这些技能发展的大脑变化的理解还处于起步阶段。这一点很重要，因为社交大脑发育的中断与自闭症、害羞和焦虑等疾病有关。我们所采用的方法限制了我们的进步。传统的脑成像方法，如功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）只能用于年幼的睡眠婴儿，而脑电图（EEG）只对大脑活动的时间方面敏感，而对空间方面不敏感。到目前为止，我们对社会大脑发育的理解往往集中在婴儿对静态面孔的处理上，与幼儿发展的复杂行为还有很长的路要走。为了取得进展，需要开发一种新的方法，在从婴儿到幼儿的自然环境中测量整体大脑反应。有了这个ESRC奖学金，我打算扩展我在博士期间开始的工作，以开发一种测量大脑反应的新方法。更具体地说，我开发并测试了一种新系统的使用，可以同时记录大脑功能的多个方面。也就是说，它结合了功能性近红外光谱（fNIRS）来测量特定脑区血流量的变化，宽带近红外光谱（bNIRS）来测量细胞线粒体内发生的细胞变化，脑电图（EEG）来测量大群神经元的时间准确、协调的活动。我证明了这个系统可以用来测量自闭症高风险和低风险婴儿的社会大脑活动。在研究期间，我的目标是a)开发一个先进的数据分析管道，以便将该系统的所有措施结合起来，以全面了解社会大脑的功能。接下来，我的目标是撰写论文，将这项研究传播给科学界。b)在更大的自闭症高危婴儿样本中使用该系统收集数据。c)为进一步的资助提出拨款建议，以便将该系统整合到许多不同的研究项目中，研究复杂的大脑机制。d)透过举办公众参与活动，向公众宣传这项研究。

Over the first five years of life, infants transition from being passive recipients of care to active shapers of their social world. Over this time, they develop and deploy a broad range of social skills that include language, imitation, empathy, cooperation, turn-taking, and imaginative play. How do they do this? Whilst we have mapped the behavioral development of these skills in exquisite detail, our understanding of the changes in the brain that underpin their development is in its infancy. This is important because disruptions in social brain development are implicated in disorders like autism, shyness, and anxiety. Our progress has been limited by the methods we have employed. Traditional brain imaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can only be used in young, sleeping infants while electroencephalography (EEG) is only sensitive to temporal but not spatial aspects of brain activity. Our understanding of social brain development has thus far often focused on the processing of static faces in young infants, a long way from the sophisticated behaviors that toddlers develop. To move forward, a new way of measuring holistic brain responses needs to be developed, in naturalistic contexts from infancy to toddlerhood.With this ESRC Fellowship, I intend to extend the work that I started during my Ph.D. in order to develop a new way to measure brain responses. More specifically, I developed and tested the use of a novel system to record multiple aspects of brain function simultaneously. Namely, it combines functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure changes in blood flow to specific brain regions, broadband near-infrared spectroscopy (bNIRS) to measure cellular changes occurring within the mitochondria of cells and EEG to measure temporally accurate, coordinated activity of large groups of neurons. I demonstrated that this system could be used to obtain measures of activity in the social brain in both infants at high and low- risk for autism. During this Fellowship, I aim toa) Develop an advanced data analysis pipeline in order to combine all the measures from this system to obtain a holistic understanding of the functioning of the social brain. Following this, I aim to write papers to disseminate this research to the scientific community.b) To collect data using this system on a larger sample of infants at high-risk for autism.c) Develop grant proposals for further funding to allow integration of this system into a number of different research projects investigating complex brain mechanisms.d) To disseminate this research to the public by organising a public engagement event.