Introduction to fNIRS

Categories: Introductory fNIRS
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About Course

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a growing neuroimaging technique, valued for its portability, its relative tolerance to movement, and its suitability for people of all ages, from newborns to older adults, in the laboratory and in the real world. Producing reliable fNIRS research, however, requires a solid understanding of the physics, physiology, and practical choices that shape every dataset.

This course gives you that foundation. Starting from how near-infrared light travels through the head, it explains what fNIRS actually measures, how the signal relates to brain activity and to the rest of the body, how instruments and experiments are designed, how data are processed, and where the field is heading. Along the way, it is honest about the limitations of the technique, so that you can design studies, read the literature, and interpret results with a critical eye.

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What Will You Learn?

  • - Explain how near-infrared light is absorbed and scattered in tissue, and why the optical window makes fNIRS possible
  • - Explain how the modified Beer-Lambert law turns light into hemoglobin changes, which assumptions it rests on, and where it breaks down
  • - Relate the fNIRS signal to neural activity through neurovascular coupling and the hemodynamic response, and interpret changes in HbO₂ and HbR
  • - Recognize how systemic physiology and the scalp can create false positives and false negatives, and how short-separation channels help
  • - Describe what is inside an fNIRS instrument, and what continuous-wave, frequency-domain, time-domain, and speckle-based systems can and cannot measure
  • - Design and run an fNIRS experiment: montage, separations, task timing, participant preparation, and signal quality checks
  • - Follow the main steps of an fNIRS processing pipeline and the community's best practices for reproducible and well-reported research
  • - Appreciate the range of fNIRS applications, from developmental and cognitive neuroscience and hyperscanning to clinical monitoring, and the open problems at the frontier

Course Content

What is fNIRS?
Why light can pass through tissue, what fNIRS measures, and where it fits among neuroimaging tools.

How does fNIRS work?
The physics that turns detected light into hemoglobin changes and images, and the assumptions behind it.

Brain Hemodynamics and Neurovascular Coupling
How the fNIRS signal relates to neural activity and to the rest of the body, and how far it can be trusted.

Collecting fNIRS Data
What is inside an fNIRS instrument, how to run a good experiment, and what advanced systems add.

Processing fNIRS Data
The common processing steps, why each one exists, and what it can and cannot do to your data.

fNIRS Challenges and Future Frontiers
Where fNIRS is the right tool, in neuroscience, muscle, and the clinic, and the open problems at the frontier.

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