ASSESSING WORKING MEMORY IN REAL-LIFE SITUATIONS WITH FUNCTIONAL NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY

摘要

Working memory is one of the most important functions in our brain, which has been widelystudied with unreal-life measured technologies. A functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)instrument with a portable and low-cost design is developed, which is capable of providinghemodynamic measurement associated with brain function in real-life situations. Using thisinstrument, we performed working memory studies involved in Chinese words encoding, verbal,and spatial stem recognition, which are mainly studied with other technologies. Our resultsshow that fNIRS can well assess working memory activities, in comparison with the reportedresults mainly using other methodologies. Furthermore, we find that hemodynamic change in theprefrontal cortex during all working memory tasks is highly associated with subjects' behavioraldata. fNIRS is shown to be a promising alternative to the current methodologies for studyingor assessing functional brain activities in natural condition.