Breakthrough Wearable Brain Scanner Reveals Infant Responses in Real-World Settings

Mother Mererid and baby Mabli were volunteers in the study (Liam Collins-Jones/UCL)

A novel technology that employs harmless light waves to measure brain activity in infants has yielded the most comprehensive understanding to date of brain functions such as hearing, vision, and cognitive processing outside of a traditional, confined brain scanner.

The wearable brain imaging headgear, developed in partnership with University College London (UCL) spin-out Gowerlabs, identified unexpected activity in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region responsible for processing emotions. This activity was observed in response to social stimuli, suggesting that babies may begin processing social situations as early as five months old.

This latest technology can measure neural activity across the whole outer surface of a baby’s brain. An earlier version developed by the same team could only measure activity in one or two parts of a baby’s brain at a time.

The researchers say this technology could help map the connections between different brain regions, establish what distinguishes typical and atypical neurodevelopment in the crucial early stages of childhood, and shed light on conditions of neurodiversity such as autism, dyslexia and ADHD.

Dr Liam Collins-Jones, first author of the study from UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering and the University of Cambridge, said: “Previously we developed a wearable imaging approach that could map activity in specific areas of the brain.

“But this made it difficult to get a complete picture as we could only focus on one or two areas in isolation, whereas in reality different parts of the brain work together when navigating real-world scenarios.

“The new method allows us to observe what’s happening across the whole outer brain surface underlying the scalp, which is a big step forward. It opens up possibilities to spot interactions between different areas and detect activity in areas that we might not have known to look at previously.

“This more complete picture of brain activity could enhance our understanding of how the baby brain functions as it interacts with the surrounding world, which could help us optimize support for neurodiverse children early in life.”

The new device was tested on sixteen five-to-seven-month-old babies. While wearing the device, the babies sat on their parent’s laps and were shown videos of actors singing nursery rhymes (social scenario) and videos of moving toys (non-social scenario).

Researchers observed distinct brain activity patterns between the two scenarios. In addition to the unexpected prefrontal cortex findings in response to social stimuli, the researchers found that activity was more localized for social stimuli compared to non-social stimuli, confirming previous findings from optical neuroimaging and MRI studies.